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.
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
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