The Terry Pratchett theory of being poor

I see this quote being shared regularly:

"No economist will ever come up with a better description of why being poor is so expensive than Terry Pratchett. Such a great quote.

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."

Of course, real life is more complicated than this cute story.

For example, more than one study has found that expensive cars are less reliable than cheaper ones. This could be because more expensive ones have more complex electronics which means more things to break down.

In a similar vein, one study found that price is not a good predictor of how durable clothes will be, especially when the price of the garments is low, and another found that cheap clothes last as long as - or longer than - designer ones.

Luxury clothes brands in China also were found to perform poorly in quality control (though this being China, maybe something else was goind on).

More broadly, price is often a poor indicator of product quality, like with wine and store-brand food and beverage products, cheaper running shoes are actually better-rated than more expensive ones and price not making a difference for audio cables.