Comment by II2II
1 month ago
It's probably more like a rich person will spend $50 on a pair of boots that will last 10 years, while a poor person will spend $10 on a pair of boots that will last a year. The upper middle class person will spend the $40 on a pair of boots that comes with surveillance and useless AI, while a middle class person will spend $30 for the same, except it bricks itself on the next firmware update.
Boots and shoes are interesting because they're genuinely an area where premium materials and construction _could_ significantly improve how long they last. We're talking 1-2 years for "normal" boots and decades for $500+ boots (with re-soling) There's also a good middle ground here. I'm not saying everyone needs really expensive boots, but it nice that you can actually spend more money for higher quality rather than a horrible system on a chip that fails after a year and renders a whole product useless.
This is true of most products, actually.
where, outside of thrift stores, are you finding boots at these prices?
That’s actually roughly the price range to manufacture normal shoes. “The average production cost of a single pair of shoes ranges between $10 and $50. This includes materials, labor, and overhead.” https://hevashoeinc.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-manufacture...
What you actually pay is a large multiple of that covering the taxes, shipping, sales channel, marketing, etc.