Usually, as quality goes up, price goes up non linearly. An iPhone is a good example. The last 10% of quality requires more than 10% of attention and cost for the provider. Also, service providers at that level of quality are fewer in number, and they charge a higher premium.
While in college, I had the brilliant idea to apply for a job in a Coach store.
I lasted about a week.
Speaking of “fit” – that job and I were not at all a good fit.
And I still refer to them as “purses”.
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You need to believe that the stuff has value in order to be able to sell it. That is not easy.
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A good salary in my opinion is one that allows one to own a moderate priced home or rent in a good neighborhood, pay for necessities including medical expenses, save for retirement, college if one has kids, and emergencies, take one moderate priced vacation per year, and have some discretionary income. A great salary allows for all of that plus much more disposable income.
For a family of 3 (our family) in DFW just starting out, a good income would be around $150k by my estimate.
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I didn’t know the product well enough to sell it. haha
“Uh, YES, it has snappy button things!”
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But then maybe the people who get haircuts at those places are those who feel “broke” on income of $840,000 per year?
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lol 
Or skills. I pay my hairdresser $40 for below average job. But she is cheap.
Sorry to be off topic, but…the off topic posts in this thread have been very entertaining 
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This is all Res gestae
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My post mentioned “elite” colleges. The “elite” college business model is largely about the “elite” branding, which makes it have odd responses to standard supply-demand-price type curves. The greater the perceived prestige of the brand, the greater the perceived value. It’s a similar idea to certain types of luxury goods. In both cases, there is a closely controlled and limited number of the item available, and a certain group are willing to pay an extremely large premium over alternatives for those items. For example, if Princeton increased sticker price next year high enough make it the most expensive sticker price college in the US, I doubt that it would have a notable negative impact on applications.
A journal publication that expands on this idea is at Why Don’t Elite Colleges Expand Supply? . Some quotes from a related podcast with the author are below:
In other words, if anyone could buy that Hermes scarf, it would just be a scarf, not a statement. An Hermes scarf says something about you. It says you are the kind of person who can afford a much better caliber of scarf than most people who wear scarves. Peter Blair began to wonder if colleges might be sending the same signal. Could this explain why the elite schools had essentially frozen their growth? He and Smetters began to create an economic model to explore this question. The model included three steps. First, students choose which colleges to apply to; then, colleges decide which students to admit; and finally, students pick which college they are going to attend. As you can imagine, there are a multitude of variables that affect each step: the total number of applicants, the academic and extracurricular quality of those applicants, as well as net tuition costs and other factors. And there was one special variable they included in the analysis, the same one that applies to luxury goods.
BLAIR: Universities are competing on what we call prestige, which is a relative measure of: how selective is my university relative to its peer institutions?
Now Blair and Smetters took their model and fed into it real-world application and matriculation data from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. They did this twice — first with the “prestige” variable turned on.
*BLAIR: We find that when we calibrate the model with prestige on, we’re able to fit the patterns in the data
Part of the reason these analyses don’t work is because for a lot of people going to elite colleges, the fee is highly subsidized. At some level the full pay middle class will drop out. I know of cases that did for Princeton.
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Yes, true but for full pay families elite colleges are akin to luxury goods, no? A good part of what you’re paying for is the brand name.
(Noting here that we’re veering off topic and should PM or spin off a thread)
Different people have different reasons why they go to an elite college. In our case, when we had a choice, we took it because of opportunities that are likely harder to come by elsewhere. I am just letting my kid have his inheritance early. It is all the kids’ money anyway 30 years from now. In the scheme of things, it is my judgment that this 300k will be a small part of his networth 30 years from now even compounded at the historical 8% stock market return. We can PM if you want to discuss …
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Unlike luxury goods, elite college brand name and connections increase future earning potential l But this has been discussed here many times
That’s why my post used phrases like “certain groups” and “sticker price.” Not everyone who attends Princeton is focused on prestige/branding and willing to pay a high premium over alternative colleges for that prestige/branding. Nevertheless ,there is a “certain group” that is well represented within the applicant pool, admitted students, alumni, … that meets this description, and I’d expect prestige/branding is a critical factor for the college.
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Trust me, I don’t see why either. My kids have more expensive hair cut than I do, what can I say, I’m the low maintenance person.
I give my husband a haircut every month, it’s pretty easy to do. I have my hair cut ever 6 months and they also color my hair for $19-$29. I get the senior discount too. We’re cheap or super frugal went it comes to hair cut.
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Yes, totally understand. Not saying everyone who pays for an “elite college” is doing it for prestige but certainly there are plenty for whom the name is a big part of their reason for picking such a college (I personally know some).
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I pat that for a cut AND highlights (and then have to tip 3 - 4 people), whenever my daughters are at the salon my colorists jokes about how I never come in (“I can see your mom’s roots from here”). My husband and sons pay $25 at a barber.
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