I wonder how true this actually is now. I initially read this and believe it was accurate but I've come across two things that make we wonder about it now
Specifically for clothes, the cost of "good quality" products could potentially be a lot more expensive, to the extent that the cost per wear is still better going with the cheap option and buying replacements more frequently. I only have one piece of anec-data which is a spreadsheet a coworker created to track this for themselves
The other thing this would seem to imply is that the total spending increases at some people as income goes down, as they have to pay for more lower quality things, but what I saw a graph of spending vs income (which I can't find again after some searching) that doesn't hold up in the data. That could mean that they're compensating for high costs of some things by spending less in other areas, I guess.
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)
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.
I wouldn't say that all cheap stuff is "bought twice" or is the worse long term value (living out of the clothes donation bin, for both rich and poor, is probably the best value as far as durability-to-cost). It's that the poor don't have the choice to buy the expensive stuff when it IS a better value.
