Sometimes it suffices to judge the height of the bar by the Y-acis scale, and then I can use the label space in the bar to display other meaningful info. Eg you could have a bar chart for each state in the US showing nr of inhabitants; and it suffices to judge the nr of inhabitants by the Y-axis value and against the height of the other states; and then you can use the label to show eg the number of new cars sold, or a percentage of new vs old csrs sold, etc.