Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.

The quote compresses the experience of inflation into a single, escalating comparison: a haircut that once cost $5 now costs $15, even though it is still described as the “ten-dollar haircut.” The humor comes from the way inflation distorts reference points—prices rise, but people keep anchoring to older “normal” prices—and from the speaker’s admission of aging and loss (no longer having hair). Beyond the joke, it suggests that inflation is most vividly understood not through statistics but through repeated encounters with everyday purchases, where memory of past prices makes present costs feel irrational or unfair.