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A story about two pairs of boots illustrates how rich people get richer in ways poor people can't

It’s got nothing to do with bootstraps.

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

The Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness explains one way the rich get richer.

Any time conversations about wealth and poverty come up, people inevitably start talking about boots. The standard phrase that comes up is "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," which is usually shorthand for "work harder and don't ask for or expect help." (The fact that the phrase was originally used sarcastically because pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps is literally, physically impossible is rarely acknowledged, but c'est la vie.)

The idea that people who build wealth do so because they individually work harder than poor people is baked into the American consciousness and wrapped up in the ideal of the American dream. A different take on boots and building wealth, however, paints a more accurate picture of what it takes to get out of poverty.

Author Terry Pratchett is no longer with us, but his writing lives on and is occasionally shared on his official social media accounts. Recently, his Twitter page shared the "Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness" from Pratchett's 1993 book "Men At Arms." This boots theory explains that one reason the rich are able to get richer is because they are able to spend less money.

If that sounds confusing, read on:

Pratchett wrote:

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

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."

In other words, people who have the money to spend a little more upfront often end up spending less in the long run. A $50 pair of boots that last five years essentially cost you $10 a year. But if you can only afford $10 upfront for a pair of boots that last six months, that's what you buy—and you end up paying twice as much over a five-year period.

There are so many areas in which this principle applies when you're poor. Buying in bulk saves you money over the long run, but you have to be able to afford the bulk cost up front. A reliable car that doesn't require regular repairs will cost more than a beater, but if the beater is all you can afford, that's what you're stuck with. You'll likely spend the same or more over time than if you'd bought a newer/higher quality car, but without the capital (or the credit rating) to begin with, you don't have much choice.

People who can afford larger down payments pay lower interest rates, saving them money both immediately and in the long run. People who can afford to buy more can spend more with credit cards, pay off the balances, build up good credit and qualify for lower interest rate loans.

There are lots of good financial decisions and strategies one can utilize if one has the ability to build up some cash. But if you are living paycheck to paycheck, you can't.

Climbing the financial ladder requires getting to the bottom rung first. Those who started off anywhere on the ladder can make all kinds of pronouncements about how to climb it—good, sound advice that really does work if you're already on the ladder. But for people living in poverty, the bottom rung is just out of reach, and the walls you have to climb to get to it are slippery. It's expensive to be poor.

When people talk about how hard it is to climb out of poverty, this is a big part of what they mean. Ladder-climbing advice is useless if you can't actually get to the ladder. And yet, far too many people decry offering people assistance that might help them reach the ladder so they can start taking advantage of all that great financial advice. Why? Perhaps because they were born somewhere on the ladder—even if it was the bottom rung—and aren't aware that there are people for whom the ladder is out of reach. Or perhaps they're unaware of how expensive it is to be poor and how the costs of poverty keep people stuck in the pit. Hopefully, this theory will help more people understand and sympathize with the reality of being poor.

Money makes money, but having money also saves you money. The more money you have, the more wealth you're able to build not only because you have extra money to save, but also because you buy higher quality things that last, therefore spending less in the long run. (There's also the reality that the uber-wealthy will pay $5,000 for shoes they'll only wear a few times, but that's a whole other kind of boots story.)

Thanks, Terry Pratchett, for the simple explanation.


This story originally appeared two years ago.

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Democracy

Single mom perfectly explains to Congress why the U.S. poverty line needs a total rehaul

"I'm not asking you to apologize for your privilege but I'm asking you to see past it."

Photo by Ev on Unsplash

Nearly 12 percent of the U.S. population lives in poverty. That's more than one in ten Americans—and the percent is even higher for children.

If you're not up on the current numbers, the federal poverty line is $12,760 for an individuals and $26,200 for a family of four. If those annual incomes sound abysmally low, it's because they are. And incredibly, the Trump administration has proposed lowering the poverty line further, which would make more poor Americans ineligible for needed assistance.

However, debates over the poverty line don't even capture the full extent of Americans struggling to make ends meet. For many people, living above the poverty line is actually worse. These are the folks who make too much to qualify for aid programs but not enough to actually get by—a situation millions of working American families find themselves stuck in.

Amy Jo Hutchison is a single mother of two living in West Virginia, and a community organizer for West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families and Our Future West Virginia. She has also lived in poverty and been part of the working poor herself. In an impassioned speech, she spoke to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform about what poverty really looks like for working families—and even called out Congress for being completely out of touch with what it takes for a family to live on while they're spending $40,000 a year on office furniture.

Watch Hutchison's testimony here (transcript included below):

Ms. Hutchison Testimony on Proposed Changes to the Poverty Line Calculation

"I'm here to help you better understand poverty because poverty is my lived experience. And I'm also here to acknowledge the biased beliefs that poor people are lazy and the poverty is their fault. But how do I make you understand things like working full-time for $10 an hour is only about $19,000 a year, even though it's well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour?

I want to tell you about a single mom I met who was working at a gas station. She was promoted to manager within 30 days. She had to report her new income the DHHR within 60 days. Her rent bumped from $475 to $950 a month, she lost her SNAP benefits and her family's health insurance, so she did what poor people are forced to do all the time. She resigned her promotion and went back to working part-time, just so she and her family could survive.

Another single mom I know encouraged her kids to get jobs. For her DHHR review she had to claim their income as well. She lost her SNAP benefits and her insurance, so she weaned herself off of her blood pressure medicines because she—working full-time in a bank and part-time at a shop on the weekends—couldn't afford to buy them. Eventually the girls quit their jobs because their part-time fast food income was literally killing their mother.

You see the thing is children aren't going to escape poverty as long as they're relying on a head of household who is poor. Poverty rolls off the backs of parents, right onto the shoulders of our children, despite how hard we try.

I can tell you about my own with food insecurity the nights I went to bed hungry so my kids could have seconds, and I was employed full time as a Head Start teacher. I can tell you about being above the poverty guideline, nursing my gallbladder with essential oils and prayer, chewing on cloves and eating ibuprofen like they're Tic Tacs because I don't have health insurance and I can't afford a dentist. I have two jobs and a bachelor's degree, and I struggle to make ends meet.

The federal poverty guidelines say that I'm not poor, but I cashed in a jar full of change the other night so my daughter could attend a high school band competition with her band. I can't go grocery shopping without a calculator. I had to decide which bills not to pay to be here in this room today. Believe me, I've pulled myself up by the bootstraps so many damn times that I've ripped them off.

The current poverty guidelines are ridiculously out of touch. The poverty line for a family of three is $21,720. Where I live, because of the oil and gas boom, a 3-bedroom home runs for $1,200 a month. So if I made $22,000 a year, which could disqualify me from assistance, I would have $8000 left to raise two children and myself on. And yet the poverty guidelines wouldn't classify me as poor.

I Googled 'congressman salary' the other day and according to Senate gov the salary for Senators representatives and delegates is $174,000 a year so a year of work for you is the equivalent of almost four years of work for me. I'm $24,000 above the federal poverty guidelines definition of poor. It would take nine people working full-time for a year at $10 an hour to match y'all's salary. I also read that each senator has authorized $40,000 dollars for state office furniture and furnishings, and this amount is increased each year to reflect inflation.

That $40,000 a year for furniture is $360 more than the federal poverty guidelines for a family of seven, and yet here I am begging you on behalf of the 15 million children living in poverty in the United States—on behalf of the one in three kids under the age of five and nearly 100,000 children in my state of West Virginia living in poverty—to not change anything about these federal poverty guidelines until you can make them relevant and reflect what poverty really looks like today.

You have a $40,000 dollar furniture allotment. West Virginia has a median income of $43,000 and some change. People are working full-time and are hungry. Kids are about to be kicked off the free and reduced lunch rolls because of changes y'all want to make to SNAP, even though 62 percent of West Virginia SNAP recipients are families with children—the very same children who cannot take a part-time job because their parents will die without insurance. People are working full-time in this country for very little money.


They're not poor enough to get help. They don't make enough to get by. They're working while their rationing their insulin and their skipping their meds because they can't afford food and healthcare at the same time.

So shame on you. Shame on you, and shame on me, and shame on each and every one of us who haven't rattled the windows of these buildings with cries of outrage at a government that thinks their office furniture is worthy of $40,000 a year and families and children aren't.

I'm not asking you to apologize for your privilege but I'm asking you to see past it. There are 46 million Americans living in poverty doing the best they know how with what they have and we, in defense of children and families, cannot accept anything less from our very own government."

In addition to Hutchison's testimony, a coalition of 26 patient organizations, including the American Cancer Society Action Network, American Heart Association, and United Way, wrote a joint letter opposing the proposed lowering of the poverty line, stating:

"The current Official Poverty Measure (OPM) is based on an old formula that already does not fully capture those living in poverty and does not accurately reflect basic household expenses for families, including by underestimating child care and housing expenses. The proposed changes to the inflation calculation would reduce the annual adjustments to the poverty measure and therefore may exacerbate existing weaknesses, putting vulnerable Americans – including those with serious and chronic diseases – at great risk. Further lowering the poverty line would also give policymakers and the public less credible information about the number and characteristics of Americans living in poverty."


This article originally appeared on 03.10.20

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Fatherhood

Dad who grew up poor perfectly explains why it’s so hard to shake the poverty mindset

Even when you're doing well, the mindset never seems to go away.

via Blake Kasemeier, used with permission.

Blake Kasemeier and his children.

A video created by Blake Kasemeier has made a lot of people feel seen because it perfectly explains the mindset people develop when they grow up poor. But it’s not just about remembering the hard times of the past. It describes how even though Kasemeier has overcome poverty as an adult, the effects of growing up financially disadvantaged still follow him to this day.

Kasemeier tells stories on social media about parenting, grief, growing up and where they sometimes collide. He documented the loss of his mom in the 2019 podcast series “Good Grief” and has written for some of the world’s leading health and fitness brands.

The video begins with Kasemeier admitting that when he was young, he'd always save half of his food until he got home "just in case." It was a symptom of living in a financially unstable family with a single mother who had him at 23 years old. To help them get by, she occasionally wrote "hot checks" at the grocery store and blasted a Counting Crows tape to cover up any scary sounds coming out of the car.

Even though sometimes it seemed like they wouldn't get by and it was “close most days” — "moms always find a way."

The video ends with a poignant stanza about the lasting effects of growing up in an economically unstable home.

“It sits inside of you. Kinda like a worry but a lot like a flame,” Kasemeier says. “These days, we are doing alright. Maybe the fire finally went out, but there is a part of me that will always taste the smoke.”

"The thing about being born rich or, rather, not poor, is that when you are broke, it feels like you are a tourist on a bad trip. A place that you don't belong," Kasemeier continues. "The thing about being born the other way around, is that as hard as you work to escape it, it's always gonna kinda feel like home

The post received some emotional reactions from people on Instagram.

"I feel the last sentence is the most profound of this video—and the underlying sense of entitlement many have vs the underlying sense of lack of self-worth others may have," thewitchofportobell0 wrote.

"Tasting the smoke is a great way to put this. Growing up this way really makes you look at some of your frugality and not norm habits in a new light. Hard to relearn," Jakemerten added.

Even though there were hardships growing up in an economically disadvantaged family, Kasemeier wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I am deeply grateful for the way I was raised,” he told Upworthy. “Unfortunately, everyone experiences some trauma in their upbringing—I wouldn't want to trade mine for someone else's. I grew up to be grateful for what I have and without a feeling of entitlement to success: I expected that everything that came to me was going to come through hard work and being kind to people and that has served me very well. It also allowed me to have a great deal of empathy for what everyone is going through.”

Kasemeier further explained the mindset to help those who weren’t raised in that environment better understand the mentality.

“I can tell you that what I experience is a feeling that the other shoe is going to drop, that when I'm up (financially), I don't expect it to last—that leads to a lot of imposter syndrome,” he told Upworthy. “There are little things—like constant anxiety that your card will decline when you go to check out at a grocery store (knowing full well that you have more than enough money). There are big things, like financial literacy.”

The video talks about economic insecurity, but is also touching tribute to his late mother, who, as he said in the post, found “a way.”

“She came from a tiny farm in rural Arkansas, moved to Hollywood where she met my dad and had me at 23 without a degree or any connections,” Kasemeier told Upworthy. “They had a shotgun wedding and divorced shortly after, my mom was left to navigate parenthood in a pretty challenging way—something I appreciate so much having kids of my own at a totally different place in my life than she was.”


This article originally appeared on 2.8.24

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Identity

A Christmas PSA: Please be mindful about what gifts Santa brings your kids

A mom is asking people to consider the bigger picture when deciding what Santa will deliver to your house.

Mary Katherine Backstrom/Facebook, Photo by Samuel Holt on Unsplash

Mary Katherine Backstrom makes a strong argument for keeping Santa gifts simple.

Every family has its own traditions and ways of doing things around the holidays, from cooking specific foods to engaging in specific cultural rituals to how the myth of Santa gets handled. In general, it's wise to live and let live when it comes to such things, but one mom is making a strong case for rethinking what gifts Santa brings kids for Christmas in the larger context of community.

Mary Katherine Backstrom has been posting a public service announcement of sorts every year for the past decade, asking people to be mindful about other families' economic realities and how a family's Santa gifts can impact other people's children. Her message makes perfect sense, but it's something people who have never struggled financially might never consider.

"My annual PSA from a child who grew up poor," Backstrom captioned her video plea. She began by sharing that her parents separated when she was little, and she lived with her mom, who didn't always have the means to give her kids a lot for Christmas.

"Every Christmas, I would split my time between my mom and my dad," she said, explaining that her dad's side of the family had a lot of money. She would see her cousins getting thousands of dollars in gifts from Santa, while her gifts from Santa at home were far more modest. So she would go from being happy with what she'd received to questioning why Santa didn't think she'd been good enough to receive the expensive gifts he brought her cousins.

"There is seriously nothing wrong with what you can give your child for Christmas. It doesn't matter. That's not the point," she said. "But when we tell children that Santa Claus brings all of our gifts, what happens is kids like me and other children who don't have as many things will see other children getting all of these expensive toys and they'll wonder what they did wrong."

As Backstrom points out, children are naturally going to compare; that's developmentally appropriate. Kids are also very aware of what's fair and what's not, so when Santa lavishes some children with expensive presents and gives other kids a lot less, the kids whose parents don't have as much end up questioning their goodness through no fault of their own.

Watch Backstrom share her story (starting at the 2:00 minute mark):

Many people in the comments expressed gratitude for the message, saying that they, too, were the kid who thought Santa didn't like them.

"I was that child too," shared one commenter. "I hated when school started back after Christmas and the teacher would go around the room and ask everyone to tell what they got for Christmas. It was painful and humiliating. I thought I was the only one who hated how Christmas was such a stressful time."

"I remember very clearly my friend that lived next door getting everything on her letter to santa and I didnt understand why santa hated me! I agree 100%!!" offered another.

"100% CORRECT! I was also that child and yes, I wondered if I wasn't a good enough girl to deserve the same things Santa was bringing the other children," wrote another.

Other people shared that they had simply never thought of this aspect of Christmas giving and they were thankful for the widened perspective.

"Thank you for opening my eyes. I wish I had thought about this when I was Santa!!" wrote one commenter.

"I never thought of it like this. It really has opened my eyes and heart... You are so insightful and wise. Thank you," shared another.

"I love your honesty. I never thought about this when my son believed in Santa. I wish I had," wrote another.

Unfortunately, not everyone received the kind and gentle plea with grace and understanding. Some doubled down on their "right" to have Santa bring whatever gifts they darn well please. Backstrom posted a blunt follow-up video pointing out that she was speaking from her own lived experience, not sharing some hypothetical what-if with no basis in reality.

"This PSA is telling you that you are hurting children when you associate Santa Claus with expensive gifts," she said. "I'm not gonna be delicate about this anymore, because I've been doing this PSA for 10 years now and I still get people arguing with me about it. There is nothing to argue here. We are talking about children's feelings."

Backstrom pointed to the number of people in the comments who shared that they were hurt by expensive Santa gifts as a child to illustrate that this is, actually, a real issue. And the solution is simple: Keep Santa simple and let the expensive gifts come from parents or other family members. It's really not a lot to ask to preserve a little holiday magic for kids who don't have much instead of making them question why Santa doesn't think they're good enough. Santa is a tradition millions of people share—let's keep that collective reality in mind and keep the fun in it for everyone.

You can follow Mary Katherine Backstrom for more on Facebook.

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