“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one’s feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever.” - James Baldwin
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … 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. … 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.” - Terry Prachett
While the above is absolutely true, the rich are rich because of generational wealth. And if you go back far enough, that generational wealth is based on exploitation, environmental abuse, genocide, all the hits.
Pratchett mentions generational wealth as well, noting the attics full of furniture and sturdy tweeds which could be handed down, and the estate itself, which could not only house innumerable family members and friends and their servants, but also provided income from rents and food from the gardens, fields, and animal pens. It’s just more spread about, whereas the Boots Theory of Poverty is a complete thought.
It’s about the lock in of poverty. It’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s about the increased costs levied on the poor that make it impossible to get out once you are in.
The other side of that coin is that the poor have to buy from the rich, and the rich have bigger profit margins when selling cheaper items to the poor. This is exploitation of a captive market.
Usually, it’s not even going back at all. The generational wealth kids I grew up around still had their parents stealing their workers’ wages and engaging in fucked up business practices.
It might not be exterminating a native population kind of thing, but there’s that whole thing about the banality of evil and generally accepted insanity, so I still think it counts.
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one’s feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever.” - James Baldwin
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … 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. … 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.” - Terry Prachett
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
While the above is absolutely true, the rich are rich because of generational wealth. And if you go back far enough, that generational wealth is based on exploitation, environmental abuse, genocide, all the hits.
Pratchett mentions generational wealth as well, noting the attics full of furniture and sturdy tweeds which could be handed down, and the estate itself, which could not only house innumerable family members and friends and their servants, but also provided income from rents and food from the gardens, fields, and animal pens. It’s just more spread about, whereas the Boots Theory of Poverty is a complete thought.
It’s about the lock in of poverty. It’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s about the increased costs levied on the poor that make it impossible to get out once you are in.
The other side of that coin is that the poor have to buy from the rich, and the rich have bigger profit margins when selling cheaper items to the poor. This is exploitation of a captive market.
Usually, it’s not even going back at all. The generational wealth kids I grew up around still had their parents stealing their workers’ wages and engaging in fucked up business practices.
It might not be exterminating a native population kind of thing, but there’s that whole thing about the banality of evil and generally accepted insanity, so I still think it counts.