"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

Good shoes will save you money if you can put in the initial investment :)

Obviously a side note, but I did a test on a topic similar to this. My SO convinced me to try out a custom shoe place (highly reviewed, and recommended) on the theory that if I was only going to buy one pair of shoes, that I should at least have a quality pair to wear around.

The results from that (sole) experiment were that the shoes lasted longer but not so much so that they beat out multiple pairs of cheaper shoes on price. The quality shoes lasted about 4 years, and I buy a pair of sneakers about every 1.5 years. However, the quality shoes were at about a 10x markup from the sneakers. So I'd need those quality shoes to last 15 years or so.

So for my money, it sounds like great fiction, but not great reality.

If you're talking about dress shoes you don't expect the soles to last especially longer than those on cheap dress shoes. With the higher quality ones you can, and it is worth it to, resole and remanufacture them multiple times. My best dress shoes are ten years old, have been redone once, and are likely to last another 20 years.

That said, I don't think this accounts for rich people having more money

That's why most people don't take their economic advice from works of fiction.

Chris Rock had a character on SNL. He was a militant black panther giving stock advice. It was great.

Does anyone have the name or any clips?

It sounds like you're comparing some kind of dress shoe to sneakers. For it to be an accurate comparison, you'd need to compare the custom dress shoes to cheap dress shoes. Also, it's pretty hard to beat the cost of sneakers for footwear if you have no need for dressier shoes.

I've done something similar, but with different results...

I wear down heels very fast, and used to get through mass-produced shoes with moulded soles far too quickly. It annoyed me hugely that I had to throw away a pair of shoes whose uppers were in perfect condition, but whose soles couldn't be replaced.

In the end, I bought a pair of decent leather-soled shoes for $350 and get them heeled regularly; that was 7 years ago, they're still going strong, and I estimate that they've saved me a ton of money.

And as a "third way", I've kept my eyes open in thrift (UK = charity) shops, and have managed to get excellent, repairable footwear for next to nothing. My current pair of oxblood brogues by Allen Edmonds cost me $25, has been going for 5 years now, and barring accidents will last me until I'm well past retirement...

That's a little extreme - a fairer comparison would be Allen Edmonds vs. a budget dress shoe.

If you want to beat sneakers in terms of price, switch to work boots like Red Wings or Chippewa.

1 - good shoes outlast the soles, and can be resoled

2 - the modern world has dramatically increased the price-per-quality on the cheap stuff, shrinking the gap

What kind of quality shoes? Good dress-y shoes can be resoled so they should last more than 4 years.

I own two pairs of sneaker-y leather shoes that look like Timberlands from the 1980s, both made by a cobbler back in Italy who has since retired. They are 6 and 8 years old respectively, and only needed resoling twice.

When I was in my 20's, and I first started making "good money", I splurged on some $170 dress shoes. Those shoes lasted a good 15 years and they were the best shoes I ever owned.

I only own two pairs of shoes, my construction boots and a pair of representable shoes for visiting customers. I'll let you guess which ones I'm more comfortable in ;)

Nothing to be ashamed of, think about it this way: what you don't have you don't need to maintain or carry with you, stuff is vastly over-rated, having more doesn't equate automatically to feeling better.