>The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take shovels, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good shovel cost fifty dollars. But an affordable shovel, 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 shovels Vimes always bought, and wore until the blade was so dull 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 shovels lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a shovel that'd still be keeping his sidewalk dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap shovels would have spent a hundred dollars on shovels in the same time and would still have snow in his driveway. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Shovels" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.