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

Take boots, for example…

1/5 … 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 okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars…
2/5

There was the noise of something he hadn’t realized he’d been hearing suddenly stopping, and the descending whine of a distant generator. The lights on the panels flickered, and most of them went out.
1/5 All over the world, people who had been wrestling with switches found that they switched. Circuit breakers opened. Computers stopped planning World War III and went back to idly scanning the stratosphere.
2/5