I think you may miss the point.

Literature doesn’t have to write literally about something for the point to be made. The boots are a stand in for whatever the issue at hand IS (rent vice buying a house would be apt).

It's a metaphor for the greater issues of being poor, which, as you quite accurately stated, are health care, education, and rent.

Health care: you can afford your insulin or you blood sugar goes out of whack and you end up in the ER.

Education: you can't afford the time to learn a new skill (or even attend school) so you can't move up out of your low-paying job.

Rent: you're paying high rent instead of owning.

The issues extend from these all the way down to the boots level.

Not really because in the boots example it's a tyranny that reigned over all poor people. The things you mentioned are easily avoidable through choices or luck. Not everyone is disabled, not everyone racked up dumb student loans, not everyone lives in a stupid high rent area, and so on.

> Good boots don't cost 1.5 months of a worker's salary.

Now. But in the past it was plausible. See this list of assorted wages and prices for items in the mid-19th century in the US [1].

Boots were around $25. There were many jobs that paid low enough that $25 would be in the neighborhood of 1.5 months worth of pay.

[1] http://anotherandrosphereblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-much-...

The analogy extends pretty well in America if you just make it about cars.