Should You Take Your Shoes Off at Home?

When the world wide Revolution came at long last, it wasn't what anybody had been expecting or hoping for. In fact, it was downright ridiculous and trivial.
What finally happened across the globe was that people got sick and tired of the inequalities of wealth and poverty, which was anticipated -- but instead of rounding up the bankers, industrialists, and millionaires, and then shooting them and making off with all their wealth, the great mass of people simply threw away all their own cash, all their coins, all their bitcoin accounts, all their precious jewels and gold and silver ingots. Fort Knox was stormed like the Bastille, but not one red cent was kept by anyone. Nope. It was all destroyed and deleted like trash. Stocks and bonds were confiscated and cut up into paper dolls. Those who held on to their conventional wealth were put on pumice rafts and set adrift in the Indian Ocean, never to be seen again.
What took the place of money, what the vast mob world wide decided simultaneously to do, was make shoes the only viable currency on the planet -- in perpetuity. 
A car now costs a pair of penny loafers, used or new -- doesn't matter. A modest 3 bedroom house can run into several pairs of jogging shoes. Depending on location. I recently took a month-long cruise of Norwegian fjords for a pair of huaraches. Smaller purchases can be made with sandals, flip flops, slippers, or even shoe laces (if they're brand new.)
There was some talk of allowing socks into the currency pool, but the thought of handling someone's dirty tube socks for a bag of potato chips made every cashier in the world scream with dismay -- so it was eventually dropped.
And while the New System has done away with much of the old inequality and unfairness, it's not quite perfect.
First of all, there were all those silly women who had stockpiled shoes over the years in their closets. They came out as the billionaires of the New Order. The smart ones set up footwear banks and immediately began making loans.
And cowboy boots unaccountably became worth more than anything Nike could offer. So all those down at the heel Texas and Montana roustabouts who had been digging ditches all their lives suddenly became power players on the world scene. Most of 'em moved to the Riviera in France and got themselves a chateau full of original Picassos. 
Naturally there was a run on every thrift store in existence, with deadly riots breaking out all over the place. But it only lasted a few hours before national governments called out the military to quell the mobs -- and who do you think wound up with most of the shoes from those gutted thrift stores? You guessed it -- the generals. No surprise there. All regular retail shoe stores were quarantined by the government, then burned to the ground -- or in the case of big box stores actually bombed out of existence with nuclear strikes.
 But on the whole, the New Order is working pretty well. No more homeless people on the streets; food is abundant; and global warming has completely vanished -- in fact the planet is entering a new Little Ice Age. Just how all this is related to footwear beats me with a stick -- but it's best not to question the status quo too much. Outspoken critics of the New Regime have been found dead, with rubber galoshes crammed into their mouths. 
My advice to the rising generation is "Don't take any wooden clogs."