The only thing that quote is good for this century is letting upscale consumers pat themselves on the back. Goods are so much cheaper than when that quote was written that using cheaper alternatives and treating them as disposable is often times cheaper in the long run for many classes of goods and usage patterns.
These sorts of tropes and rules of thumb that have been stripped of all nuance and packaged up nice and neatly so that the lowest common denominator consumer on the internet can read, understand and press the up-vote button are good for little more than achieving said upvotes. When subject to the complexities of real life they are wrong as often as they are right. You may as well toss a coin. There are unfortunately no rules of thumb you can follow that will outperform even a minimal application of critical thought.
I also read a partial rebuttal which amounted to "Rich people pay less because they can buy more durable boots, but they also pay more because they buy fancier boots, and the increased expense from buying fancier boots is more than the savings from the boots lasting longer."
There's also the question of why the poor person doesn't take out a loan to buy the more expensive boots, and pay off the loan with the money that he saves from not having to continually buy pairs of cheaper boots. Many poor people still have credit cards, and even the ones who don't can often trade favors or get loans from relatives.
And even the response "they should save up for the boots" isn't obviously wrong. For obvious reasons it's hard for poor people to save, but how often is it so hard that something like this isn't possible?
Okay, the quote might not be literally true for boots (or many consumer goods) in 2021, but it's a good intuitive explanation of why it's quote-unquote "expensive to be poor," which is absolutely a meaningful and important idea to understand.
A lot of it comes down to leverage: if you're poor, you have very, very bad options when it comes to borrowing money.
Say you're already living paycheck-to-paycheck, and then you fall and break your wrist. You don't have health insurance, so you go to an urgent care clinic, and have to pay $200 out of pocket (a very optimistic number!)
You were already gonna finish this week with less than $30 in the bank. Now you literally can't buy yourself groceries until Friday. What do you do?
For a lot of people, the answer is credit card debt (18-26% or more APR) or, worse, payday loans (20-40% PER MONTH if it's a legal place, worse if it's not).
Say you take out a payday loan at 20% to borrow back just that $200. Now you're gonna owe the place $40 at the end of the month. Congrats -- your bank account is now gonna be overdrawn. Hope you don't try and use your debit card, because now you owe $35 in overdraft fees, too.
If you can't borrow money cheaply, the very first time that you're forced to borrow, you are fucked if you can't get back out very quickly. And if you're in a place where you were going to a payday loan, there's very little reason to think you're gonna be able to get back out.
There's a lot of other shit. If you're poor you have a worse car that needs more maintenance/uses more gas/gets more traffic tickets. You get shittier sleep because your mattress is 12 years old and you're stressed all the time, so it's harder to even bring yourself to work. You can't afford a daycare, so you have to stay home with your kid an extra day every week, so you work fewer hours and make even less.
And that's not even scratching the surface of what it's like to live amongst poverty. Everything I've said can happen to someone who's trying their absolute hardest every single day, and doing it all "right"; and people aren't perfect. An unexpected kid, a drug addiction, getting involved with gangs; these things happen to well-meaning, good people, and trap them in a life of poverty in a way that's incredibly difficult to escape even if you do everything right afterwards.
It's a vicious spiral when you don't have a safety net.
Yes. On top of what the other person replied to in terms of borrowing power, you also have general goods. Buying in bulk saves money. But it requires you to be able to pay upfront for it. On top of that it requires storage and transportation too. It’s small things like buying 4 rolls of toilet paper vs 30 rolls. 30 rolls of toilet paper are expensive and take up space, but long term it’s the better option than 4. It’s the boots argument, but without the classist angle that OP is so upset about.
And a good explanation to boot.