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Comment by tetromino_ | Hacker News Reader

In original context, was a $30 haircut supposed to be cheap or expensive? In 2022 in my neighborhood, $30 is somewhat on the expensive side for a men's haircut (a basic haircut at a trendy barber shop is $25) but extremely cheap for a women's haircut. But what was the intended meaning of the phrase in Japan in the 1990s in relation to the characters speaking it?

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Well first of all, I don't think the phrase existed in the original Japanese, only in the English dub where they made the creative decision to make the character who says it talk like some Redneck Trucker.

The context is said Redneck Trucker is a robot who has been programmed to kill the main characer, Goku. One of Goku's friends says something about how if he does that he is just a slave with no free will. Our Redneck Trucker then points out that humanity has used their free will to do plenty of bad things, followed by our line here. So if you want to simplify its meaning, you could just translate it to "Don't talk down to me".

So in context, $30 is an expensive haircut, and the purpose is to indicate the speaker feels the target is talking down to him, but the actual reason has nothing to do with the target being rich as opposed to being human.

It could also be some meta commentary from the English side about how ridiculous the hair of everyone in the show or even the general genre is.

It would be $50 today assuming moderate inflation.

Damn, I’m getting my hair cut at the wrong place. I like my guy though. He massages my head.

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