3 ms·

What's more expensive, to be rich or to be poor?

riffraff 4y ago
This calls for Comes Boot Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness! > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
- braingenious 4y ago
  >Comes Boot Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness! Comes Boot
- toyg 4y ago
  That's why consumer finance unlocked new worlds to the savvy: because it allowed non-capital-owners to make capital investments on durable goods, for a relatively small price. Unfortunately this is not explained properly, so people think it's just a shortcut to instant gratification.
dahart 4y ago
Depends on what you mean by ‘expensive’ ;) … is it absolute dollars, or relative dollars (e.g. fraction of income), or is it time spent earning each dollar, or the effects on health, happiness, and longevity from not having enough dollars? Looking at that list, there might only be one (misleading?) metric that makes being rich more expensive than being poor. But how rich and how poor are we talking?

This calls for Comes Boot Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness! > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

braingenious 4y ago
>Comes Boot Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness! Comes Boot
toyg 4y ago
That's why consumer finance unlocked new worlds to the savvy: because it allowed non-capital-owners to make capital investments on durable goods, for a relatively small price. Unfortunately this is not explained properly, so people think it's just a shortcut to instant gratification.

dahart 4y ago

Depends on what you mean by ‘expensive’ ;) … is it absolute dollars, or relative dollars (e.g. fraction of income), or is it time spent earning each dollar, or the effects on health, happiness, and longevity from not having enough dollars? Looking at that list, there might only be one (misleading?) metric that makes being rich more expensive than being poor. But how rich and how poor are we talking?