How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less • Hacker News Board

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#31

Post by loewenskind » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:43 AM UTC

tome wrote: post #20

jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days. The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. And if you don't have children and your spouse is out working you might as well go to work yourself, rather than t…

The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. Is this true? Surely the cost of living has decreased over the last 100 years, so it must be easier for a single breadwinner to feed a family than it was back then.

This is what people somehow don't get. If cost of living goes down, so do the salaries. How do you think those decreases are paid for? For most any business you can name the biggest item in the budget will be human resources. If you want to cut prices this is where you have to cut to have any real effect.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#32

Post by lukesandberg » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:45 AM UTC

cglee wrote: post #7

zaidf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is a soul crushing business for 99/100 prostitutes How is that conclusion much better than the one you're attacking?

I think his point in that example was that articles that seek to glorify something that supports human trafficking, sex slavery, and forced rape - all of which millions are currently victims - should be based on more than conjecture and assumptions.

what particular pieces of conjecture and assumptions are you referring to?

Unless i read it wrong (which is always a possibility) the article was one half empirical description of the market for prostitution and one half case study of how a particular prostitute discovered a lucrative market niche.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#33

Post by JacobAldridge » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:45 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #13

rokhayakebe wrote: post #3

$300/hour? That is one of the highest paying job i ever heard of.

Better to go to law school and specialize. I once worked with a big time tech lawyer. For three hours work, we paid him what I made pre-tax in two weeks, and I wasn't doing terribly for that point in my life. Pretty sure he's not getting beat up by any pimps when he strolls into work each day, either. He worked really hard, too. I mean, I wasn't paying the bills, but he definitely seemed worth the cash. Filed some aw…

There is a difference between 'charge-out hourly rate' and 'hourly rate of pay'. Even high end lawyers are unlikely to be paid more than one-third of their charge out rate, unless they're partners (ie, business 'owners').

You probably took that into consideration with your response - I'm not disagreeing with you, just making it clearer.

And yes, there are many jobs where the pay rate exceeds $300 / hour. In my field (business coaching - no formal qualifications necessary, though they may help) a Harvard Business Review study found the average charge-out rate is $500/hr, the top measure is $2400/hr, and most practitioners work solo so don't split that fee with anyone else.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#34

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:45 AM UTC

maxklein wrote: post #16

I'm not sure if what they are saying applies to the first girl they speak about. A street hooker cannot easily transition to a highly paid escort. You need to be pretty and young at least, to earn that much. And the street hookers, if they increased their prices, would have no customers.

Bingo...

That's the problem I saw in this many-problem'ed article.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#35

Post by loewenskind » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:46 AM UTC

stoney wrote: post #28

tome wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. Is this true? Surely the cost of living has decreased over the last 100 years, so it must be easier for a single breadwinner to feed a family than it was back then.

Increasing the size of the workforce will tend to put downward pressure on wages. So if you double the workforce I expect you'd see pretty serious downward pressure on wages, maybe to the point where previously one partner working could support the family (historically the norm), but now you need both partners working. Though of course adding women to the workforce has had lots of positive effects, so maybe the overa…

Exactly right. Having both people working not only increases the work force, it increases peoples disposable income driving prices above what a single income can afford. I.e. either through downward wage pressure or upward price pressure, buying power goes down.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#36

Post by henryl » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:49 AM UTC

danilocampos wrote: post #13

rokhayakebe wrote: post #3

$300/hour? That is one of the highest paying job i ever heard of.

Better to go to law school and specialize. I once worked with a big time tech lawyer. For three hours work, we paid him what I made pre-tax in two weeks, and I wasn't doing terribly for that point in my life. Pretty sure he's not getting beat up by any pimps when he strolls into work each day, either. He worked really hard, too. I mean, I wasn't paying the bills, but he definitely seemed worth the cash. Filed some aw…

Lawyers don't even pocket the majority of their rate prorata.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#37

Post by loewenskind » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:49 AM UTC

aresant wrote: post #11

zaidf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is a soul crushing business for 99/100 prostitutes How is that conclusion much better than the one you're attacking?

Fair enough. Me vs. Professor of Economics Steven Levitt: Levitt: 1 hand-picked prostitue that was a guest lecturer in his college class. Me: - PROSTITUTION IS THE MOST DANGEROUS JOB IN AMERICA. The murder rate is 1 in 490. Compare that to the fishing industry, where the death rate is 1 in 775. - Eighty-two percent of prostitutes reported having been physically assaulted since entering prostitution. - Women trafficke…

You know, there are some countries where prostitution is legal. Of course the picture will be bleak where it's illegal.

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#38

Post by dennisgorelik » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:54 AM UTC

zaidf wrote: post #29

jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days. The pressure does not come from being stigmatized but from the fact that a single person income is not enough to feed a family of four in plenty of places. And if you don't have children and your spouse is out working you might as well go to work yourself, rather than t…

Funny. An assistant at my Dad's work figured she was paying almost her salary in babysitting costs and other expenses for things she could do herself if she had time. So she quit. My dad calls it the pay-your-neighbor-so-he-can-pay-his-neighbor phenomenon. Uncle Sam makes the most money in that relationship. He makes nothing when you babysit your own kid; he makes plenty when you hire someone to do the same thing(and…

So high taxes make people more likely to maintain traditional family (husband works and wife runs the household).

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#39

Post by jacobolus » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:58 AM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #21

Confusion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the majority of men died without descendents. Things like that. Well, to me that's a reason not to read the essay, because it sounds quite like a naturalistic fallacy to care whether someone had offspring.

> Well, to me that's a reason not to read the essay, because it sounds quite like a naturalistic fallacy to care whether someone had offspring. I think you'll find it a thought-provoking essay regardless of your personal ethics. It's well-written, has lots of numbers, and brings up a lot of counterintuitive/counter-cultural points. I found it through Hacker News originally, actually.

Frankly life is pretty shitty for (e.g.) rural peasants of both genders, and while in general in the past men had more independence and ability to choose their life direction, etc., I’ve always been pretty skeptical of attempts to rank the two in any absolute way. Men got killed in high numbers in war. Women got raped by invading armies. Men worked extremely physically demanding jobs that made their muscles and bones give out by age 40. Women worked differently physically demanding jobs that resulted in terrible repetitive stress injuries. Men often had legal rights over their wives, but of course had all kinds of ways of exerting their own influence and control. In some societies, many men were stuck as lonely bachelors while women were forced to become bottom-of-the-totem-pole second or third wives. Etc.

There is absolutely an important and in many ways terrible impact on a society from having one gender mostly in charge of the official hierarchies of social and political control. But it’s also the easiest thing to examine and understand from afar, and so it can overshadow other (maybe just as important) parts of the culture.

[edit: I skimmed the essay under discussion and part of it makes loosely the same point as this latter. One thing it does which I find annoying is that in using Larry Summers’s sacking as an example it ignores that the faculty wanted Summers out long before his famous comments, for completely unrelated reasons. His misdeed was not “to think thoughts that are not allowed to be thought” and to characterize it that way is quite misleading. I also am annoyed at the analysis of histograms of grades, test scores, and salaries as implying more about innate ability than they do about cultural assimilation.]

Re: How a call girl can earn far more by actually working far less

#40

Post by loewenskind » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 8:03 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #3

$300/hour? That is one of the highest paying job i ever heard of.

You can get that if you pick an enterprise product (e.g. SAP, IBM products, etc.), specialize in it and consult (not contract!). Though getting pounded by strangers might be easier and more rewarding.