Poverty is expensive: the inability to pay once for durable goods forces repeated payment for inferior ones.
Pratchett's 1993 formulation in Men at Arms: ten-dollar boots last ten years, five-dollar boots last a season, and the poor man spends more on boots while having wet feet. Now cited in poverty economics.
In practice
- A household that cannot find £400 for a washing machine rents one at £8 a week, and has paid £1,200 by the third year.
- A household without a deposit pays weekly rent above the mortgage it cannot get, and the payments build nothing.
- Standing
- A novelist's formulation now cited in poverty-economics discussion.
- Subject
- Economics & Incentives
- Essay
- The theories behind every argument about money