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The Sam Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called simply the boots theory, is an economic theory that people in poverty have to buy cheap and subpar products that need to be replaced repeatedly, proving more expensive in the long run than more expensive items.

When you are in bed with the cobbler, this is what you want.

It applies in education, healthcare and infrastructure. They don't want you to pay once , they want you to pay again and again, often lying to hide this very basic fact, claiming inefficiency and unaffordability.

Think toll roads, school buildings, ferries, water, housing.

The Uk is a great example, housing, water, railways all basketcases all needing bailout at the end after vast wealth extraction.

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💯👍Plus also the fallacy of bulk buying to save $$ - only people who already have $$ can afford to bulk buy & those with already insufficient income have to pay higher prices per lt or kg for smaller quantities of essential items 🤷

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Being poor is pricey

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Great work Sapphi. 👍😁

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Because on established platforms such as RNZ TVNZ, Stuff the financial/business /political journalists keep on reiterating the supposition that the previous labour government were absolutely spendthrift therefore we have an economic crisis that the government is having to make hard decisions to correct. I started to wonder if I was in a cult of doubting this. Because surely how can people like Bernard Hickey, Dr Ganesh Nana and Craig Renney be correct when all the official pundits are saying otherwise.

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As Grover Norquist declared decades ago in The States (paraphrasing), ‘starve and shrink it until it is small enough to drown in the bathtub.’ It’s how you privatise every last function of an otherwise healthy system of governance.

Break it and then declare the dictum is confirmed: clearly government can’t do anything well or right. Sell it all off to our Oligarchs and live in their libertarian utopia. Which makes you their serf…

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