LogFAQs > #974390854

It's more expensive to be poor than it is to be rich. Terry Pratchett mentions it in his book Men at Arms.

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 the 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.

I've noticed this myself. I was buying cheap walking shoes because I could easily afford $20, but they would wear out in just a few months. I finally bought an expensive pair of shoes costing $150, a price that was a bit harder to swallow, and they barely have any wear on them after 2 years. I'd have spent well over $150 buying cheap shoes in that time, and I'd have to keep buying them, while the expensive shoes will be good for several more years.