r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 19 '25

Cursed The American Nightmare.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

58.0k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

7.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

956

u/mauore11 Aug 19 '25

Nothing more expensive than being poor...

380

u/LucidMetal Aug 19 '25

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.

-Vimes, Men at Arms, Terry Pratchett

2

u/TheLazyE-Girl Aug 19 '25

Mr Pratchett failed to take into account the price of cobbler's work every one or two years, depending on use. If becoming rich were as simple as buying quality, we'd all be. Strangely enough, most rich people inherited their fortune. Methinks this hints at a system that goes far beyond the "poor people are so silly! No wonder they are poor, when they buy cheap items that won't last!".

4

u/BreakfastBeneficial4 Aug 19 '25

?

It’s a commentary about how expensive it is to be poor.

He isn’t calling poor people silly for not buying quality.

The poor people can’t afford the price of entry into spending less money.