On a recent visit to a neighborhood barbershop -- one of those places that don't accept credit cards because they don't want to create records that'll make things too easy for the tax authorities -- I learned that the price of a haircut had gone up from $15 to $16. That fact has no impact for me as a consumer. And I suspect many of the other patrons will find the news similarly un-newsworthy. After all, I simply sat for the cut as usual, and handed the barber a $20 bill, telling him to keep the change. That is exactly what I would have done if the price of the service has still been $15. At $15, I feel a bit generous giving him a $5 tip, but that is balanced by the fact that I would feel like a tightwad asking for any change back. At $16, I don't feel generous, but $4 is still a perfectly good tip, 25% of the listed value of the service. So: generalizing from my own case to the customer base in general, I doubt the total revenue rises much with thi...
