Do think with Vimes' boots theory of poverty makes sense? [see reply for description if unfamiliar with Vimes' boots]

For the purposes of this poll, "grew up poor" means poor enough that you had something like regular experiences of being lightheaded or unable to stand due to hunger, lack of dental or medical care, were sometimes living on the street, etc.

To normalize what poor means, please only answer if you grew up in the U.S. or Canada.

Roughly speaking, Vimes' boots theory of poverty is the idea that, if you're poor, you're forced to buy cheap products that need to frequently be replaced, causing a kind of poverty trap.

Below are some quotes that illustrate typical examples of how people think about Vimes' boots theory.

I was going to write this after the poll expired to avoid poisoning the results, but since I don't find the results remotely plausible for at least two reasons, no reason to wait.

1. I posted this poll at ~1am PT / 4am ET and the response rate is basically the same as for any other poll I post around this time even though I asked for U.S. and Canadian folks only. I have decent info on, geographically, who will see things depending on when I post based on when I post and this makes no sense.

2. The numbers have bounced around a bit, but it's been fairly consistent that ~20% of people marked themselves as having grown up starvation-level poor, which should not be true in a poll that's representative of the U.S. and Canadian population, let alone one of a population of people on Mastodon who are mostly programmers.

In surveys, you'll see 20% of some disadvantaged populations with food insecurity, but that's less poverty than this poll's definition.

Anyway, I polled everyone I personally know who grew up poor (by the definition above) and zero of them thought that Vimes' boots theory made sense. Additionally, on the specific quotes above, people found them laughable, with comments like

"what kind of poor person is buying a new shirt?" [the implication, too obvious to be stated, is that they're getting hand-me-downs or buying shirts at a secondhand store and "how much does this guy think it costs to operate a beater car?"

"wtf was the person doing who was buying shoes every year until they bought $200 boots? I still have my XYZ shoes I got for free ten years ago, my ABC goes I got for free six years ago, [etc.]"

And, BTW, none of these people are currently poor, although many still have deeply ingrained habits. And the last comment was from a former elite athlete and serious mountaineer, who was certainly putting more intense wear on their gear than the person from the quote, who was walking around Boston.

If you grew up poor and do not find Vimes' boots theory to be anything but silly, I'd be curious to hear why.

As someone who read the Pratchett bit when I was a poor kid and appreciated it as a funny bit, I've been baffled by how often I see people take it seriously, both on the internet (it's frequently the top comment in poverty discussions) as well as IRL.

I've polled quite a few poor people about this and literally everyone has had the same reaction as me.

As I've discussed elsewhere (https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1477001191548542980, https://mastodon.social/@danluu/109537224752779343, etc.), of course there are massive advantages to growing up middle class and even larger advantages to growing up wealthy but, AFAICT, none of the advantages are related to this Vimes' boots thing people love trotting out.

People I polled had the same reaction — being poor is terrible, just not for the Vimes' boots reason that middle-class people and rich people love to cite.

For everyone who's replied with "haha well no one thinks it's about boots [even though I literally quote someone who specifically cites boots], it's actually about how you can spend less if you buy better stuff", please name the classes of items where, as you get richer, you spend less in total by buying better items.

Multiple people I talked to found this to be the most laughable part — what do you spend less on as you get richer? Food? No. Clothing? No. Housing? No. Medical care? No. etc.

I think a lot of this comes from people having no idea what a poor person might spend on something. If you eat rice and beans from 50lb bags, that's really cheap. If you want to beat this cost "purchasing only a rich person can do", you basically have to buy by the pallet. How many middle class or rich people do this?

I do actually know one person who does this (a formerly poor person, of course) but, in practice, rich people aren't spending less on food because they can buy in bulk or whatever

Housing is another common example with the appreciation of a home vs. the cost of rent. But almost every time I've had someone brag about how much their home has appreciated, when I've compared how my investments have done (boring mostly world market cap weighted stuff, using some instruments to get leverage), my investments have outperformed, so this is really about having investments vs. not, which is super different from Vimes' boots as stated as well as how people generally reference it.