[armchairhacker]

Not for boots. For some stuff the more expensive version still lasts longer or is otherwise better. But usually a) it doesn’t matter or b) you need more than money to find the “best” version of something, you need connections or you need to know how to search the web and filter bias. Boots, household appliances, etc. aren’t the issue.

Being poor is still very much expensive. You can’t afford good insurance, you spend more money on repairing old things than buying new ones, you can’t afford education and credentials necessarily to get a good job, you can’t unwind to prevent burnout, you can’t take risks or spend time on side projects, you can’t quit terrible jobs because otherwise you’ll become homeless, constant depression about how life is unfair and anxiety about late payments impacts health and performance (which impacts university grades or job salary), extra things you must do like wait in like at the food panty and work extra jobs also impact health and performance, and more. It really is significantly easier to make money when you have money.

You need to read first-hand accounts of poor people from social media like https://reddit.com/r/povertyfinance and https://reddit.com/r/homeless to really understand (and yes, people lie and exaggerate on social media, and I see many instances of missing context and over-exaggeration on these subs, but the basic logic behind “being poor makes life much harder” very much checks out, and everything I mentioned above is 100% accurate. There are even former SWEs among the poor and even though they can avoid some of the pitfalls, they are nonetheless struggling the same)

[Clamchop]

In terms of financial incentives, it is regressive. Overdraft fees, late fees, fines for parking or not having insurance or not fixing that tail light, poorer performing credit cards, worse interest rates, etc.