haircuts here are $10 (typical Asian salon) to $18 (good American barbershop - still the best haircut). So, yes, a $2 haircut does make a difference.

On the flip side, working in Thailand, lunch cost under $1 per person (240 baht for six people). China is also much cheaper. Despite China's housing bubble, housing is still much cheaper. An existing 1000 sq ft apartment in central China is about $50,000.

The US is a high transaction cost society. Some of that is good, but a lot of it is unnecessary (try to go into business for yourself, and see how helpful the government is).

Europe is even more extreme, with all the new RoHS, recycling, and energy saving requirements. It may sound good on the surface, but it also reduces innovation - the whole PC business would never have happened in an environment like Europe today. Also, many of the requirements really don't help that much (e.g. lead in electronics isn't a big problem (1% of lead usage), and the billions of dollars spent going lead free could have done more good elsewhere), and I suspect exist partly because they sound good and partly because they help protect existing, well capitalized companies.

Tony