The part about the cost of a cheap straw shoe vs the longer lasting tabi reminded me of the Sam Vimes Boots Theory from the Pratchett novels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
I wonder how true this actually is now. I initially read this and believe it was accurate but I've come across two things that make we wonder about it now
Specifically for clothes, the cost of "good quality" products could potentially be a lot more expensive, to the extent that the cost per wear is still better going with the cheap option and buying replacements more frequently. I only have one piece of anec-data which is a spreadsheet a coworker created to track this for themselves
The other thing this would seem to imply is that the total spending increases at some people as income goes down, as they have to pay for more lower quality things, but what I saw a graph of spending vs income (which I can't find again after some searching) that doesn't hold up in the data. That could mean that they're compensating for high costs of some things by spending less in other areas, I guess.
jaipilot747|2 years ago
jezzamon|2 years ago
Specifically for clothes, the cost of "good quality" products could potentially be a lot more expensive, to the extent that the cost per wear is still better going with the cheap option and buying replacements more frequently. I only have one piece of anec-data which is a spreadsheet a coworker created to track this for themselves
The other thing this would seem to imply is that the total spending increases at some people as income goes down, as they have to pay for more lower quality things, but what I saw a graph of spending vs income (which I can't find again after some searching) that doesn't hold up in the data. That could mean that they're compensating for high costs of some things by spending less in other areas, I guess.
bookofjoe|2 years ago