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

#151

Post by sprout » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 6:42 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #131

presidentender wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why there are sports teams and chess club.

None of those things are scheduled so consistently and tightly that they replace an after-school sitter; they mostly make life harder for parents, not easier.

Generally the ideal is co-op; that's what my parents did. I know it's somewhat a radical idea, but you can make friends with other parents. Even with two or three families your individual responsibilities become much more manageable. Each parent can take off early once a week and 7-8 children come over to hang out. You do it right and they won't even really need supervision.

And since you've fostered relationships with the parents of your friends' children (or fostered your childrens' relationships with your friends' children) odds are there will be enough overlap in after-school activities that rides home are equally simplified.

Of course, this sort of stuff does take planning and relationship building, but generally it will be a lot less trouble than having a single-income household.

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

#152

Post by sprout » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 6:47 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #134

jacquesm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everybody lives in Manhattan? The world is a lot larger than just the US, and even in the US if you've moved out of Manhattan (say to one of those suburbs) and you have a family of four to feed you'll be surprised how much month there is left at the end of your money as a single earner. Overfeeding is more related to what you eat than the money you spend on it, in fact it is easier to overfeed on cheap food t…

Well, of course it's easier to overfeed on cheap food; you don't run out of money as quickly, and unsurprisingly, the food with the most calories per dollar is also the food that contains the most calories per gram: pure fats and carbohydrates. (Pure alcohol and protein are a bit more expensive, I'll admit, but even pure gluten is pretty cheap.) Food in the US is much more expensive in the majority of the world. I im…

You have to be smart and fairly industrious to cook. If you can't hold down a job, odds are you can't cook well enough to make it a serious value proposition over pre-packaged and restaurant fare.

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

#153

Post by mturmon » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 6:47 PM UTC

georgecmu wrote: post #139

I posted a critical view of sentiments expressed in this article a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1573319

Useful post. It addresses some of the facile comments above that the Freakonomics article is just about business/pricing strategy, by calling out some of the non-economic opinions pushed in the article. ("Allie is like the ideal wife", Allie is successful because she sees good in everyone, etc.) It's glib and myopic -- concentrating on this little aspect of pricing, and highlighting all the sunny and upbeat sides of being a prostitute, passing over the bad stuff almost completely.

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

#154

Post by tptacek » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 6:54 PM UTC

sprout wrote: post #151

tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those things are scheduled so consistently and tightly that they replace an after-school sitter; they mostly make life harder for parents, not easier.

Generally the ideal is co-op; that's what my parents did. I know it's somewhat a radical idea, but you can make friends with other parents. Even with two or three families your individual responsibilities become much more manageable. Each parent can take off early once a week and 7-8 children come over to hang out. You do it right and they won't even really need supervision. And since you've fostered relationships wi…

I'm on a first-name, share-an-occasional-beer basis with every parent on my block (and there are many), and my perception is that this kind of arrangement is not as common or simple as you're making it out to be.

It seems fraught; taking care of someone else's children is a serious commitment. If you screw up your schedule, people lose half a day of work. After-school child care just isn't expensive enough to be worth this hassle.

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

#155

Post by kragen » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:19 PM UTC

sprout wrote: post #152

kragen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, of course it's easier to overfeed on cheap food; you don't run out of money as quickly, and unsurprisingly, the food with the most calories per dollar is also the food that contains the most calories per gram: pure fats and carbohydrates. (Pure alcohol and protein are a bit more expensive, I'll admit, but even pure gluten is pretty cheap.) Food in the US is much more expensive in the majority of the world. I im…

You have to be smart and fairly industrious to cook. If you can't hold down a job, odds are you can't cook well enough to make it a serious value proposition over pre-packaged and restaurant fare.

No, you don't have to be smart to cook. I don't know if you even have to be smart to cook well. I suspect not, because I learned to cook good food pretty quickly; someone who was even dumber than I am might take a little longer, but it still wouldn't be a substantial fraction of a human lifespan.

It does take work, but not a huge amount of work, especially if the aim is to feed your family, not to cook well. Oranges and bananas, you don't even have to cook. A peanut-butter sandwich is two minutes if you already have bread and peanut butter. Cooking brown rice or lentils involves dumping a measuring cup into a pot three or four times and setting a timer. Same thing's true of eggs, oatmeal, polenta, ramen, and grits. Other beans, you have to dump into a pot of water the night before, and you probably ought to sort them so you don't bite a rock, which might take five or ten minutes for a big pot. A big pot of beans and a big pot of rice can satisfy the caloric and protein needs of a family of four for a few days.

And if you dump garlic, onions, butter, soy sauce, salt, pepper, mayonnaise, and hot sauce on any random barely-edible non-sweet crap, you can get it up to the level of McDonald's or Popeye's pretty quick.

There are some cheap foods that require a lot of work. Collards are a pain. Baking your own bread may be cheaper than buying it in a store‚ but it's a lot of work. And about any vegetable you use in a dish is gonna need some slicing. But it doesn't require you to be "industrious" at the level of digging a ditch for eight hours, or working overtime at the bubblebath factory they can't afford to heat.

Now, it's true you aren't born knowing this stuff. You have to learn it, and even if you know it in theory you may not be in the habit of putting it into practice. The soft-drink aisle and the potato chips are pretty tempting. Stopping in at McDonald's on the way home from school is a lot more immediate than stopping at Jewel Osco for a loaf of bread and some peanut butter, even if you evade the peanut butter. And if you've just gotten off your split shift at the call center and you have a couple of kids to feed before you start in on your homework, it's pretty hard to motivate yourself to cook. I'm not trying to minimize the difficulty of being poor in the US.

I'm just saying the problem with food is not that good food is out of reach.

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

#156

Post by run4yourlives » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 7:32 PM UTC

megablast wrote: post #70

caf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aye - being a stay-at-home husband and father ought to be as equally socially acceptable as wife & mother.

No, I am sorry it is not. Anybody can stay at home. Not anyone can start up a company, or work at a senior level, or even work at a technical level. There are plenty of people who could never achieve that level of competence, they can stay at home.

Something tells me you do not have a family.

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

#157

Post by sdelmont » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 8:13 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #156

megablast wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am sorry it is not. Anybody can stay at home. Not anyone can start up a company, or work at a senior level, or even work at a technical level. There are plenty of people who could never achieve that level of competence, they can stay at home.

Something tells me you do not have a family.

something tells me he will never have a family

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

#158

Post by amalcon » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 8:17 PM UTC

billybob wrote: post #98

stoney wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Increasing the size of the workforce will tend to put downward pressure on wages." I am also not an economist, but you're only covering the supply of workers. Do more workers = more money being spent = more products/services demanded = increased demand for workers? In other words, does it even out? I have read that wages have decreased in the last few generations while dual income houses became normal, but I don't k…

I'm not an economist either, but heuristically I'd expect the precise opposite to be true: the products/services with elastic demand curves (that is, luxuries) tend to require time to consume in addition to money. Simply having more money available will not necessarily increase demand for these things.

If you wanted to make this argument, I think a better way to approach it would be from the supply side. The supply of goods and services should increase, because well, that's what workers produce. This should theoretically lower the prices of existing goods and services, because increased supply of a commodity puts downward pressure on pricing.

That's all in theory. I highly doubt it's anywhere near that simple. The thing about macroeconomics is that it's somewhere between cargo cultism and ancient mythology: people compare situations that superficially resemble each other, and then invent models that explain several situations but are entirely untestable.

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

#159

Post by BrandonM » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 8:19 PM UTC

dLuna wrote: post #95

rokhayakebe wrote: post #3

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

These are the billable hours. I would guess that the time spent finding good clients is about the same again. So make that $150/hour. Still good, but in the same range as a technical consultant with 5-10 years experience.

...who is also spending non-billable time finding good clients.

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

#160

Post by Ardit20 » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 9:04 PM UTC

todayiamme wrote: post #50

lionhearted wrote: post #14

Problems with the article: > Throughout history, it has invariably been easier to be male than female. Yes, this is an overgeneralisation and yes, there are exceptions, but by any important measure, women have had it rougher than men. This one is a PC-friendly thing to say, the opposite point of view is not. If you haven't read it, I must urge you to check out the excellent "Is There Anything Good About Men?" essay b…

>>>but I'm hoping society will adjust to a point where traditional femininity can peacefully coexist as a respected choice for women on how to live their lives, because I think it can be a suitable, powerful, happy, and meaningful for choice for many women That's the linchpin you see. The truth is that femininity and masculinity are a continuous spectrum of variation and almost all such statements tend to prescribe s…

"Why do we need to box them into little boxes, so that they conveniently fit into our tiny little realities?"

Simple, because one has a penis and the other a vagina. If you are going to downvote at this point, refrain. It is simply an example to suggest that women and men are fundamentally different. One provides one part of the equation, the other provides the other part of the equation. That does not mean that either is superior, but it does mean that in any household, unless the household is sufficiently rich, one will have to look after the children, while the other provides the resources for the former to do so. It is called distribution of labour.

Women have those sort of qualities which lead them to be more suited to nurture children. Men do not. Is that cultural, I doubt it. You find it in most animal species too.

Perhaps, women see the grass to be greener on the other side, rather than to consider their grass as very green and pleasant. They get to go shopping with men's money, they get to spend all their day sitting on their ass, they get to have friends to chat with about pleasant things, they get to have all they want.

If they want to trouble their brains, then it is simply not true that society has prohibited them from doing so. In any time and nation there have been women who have engaged in all sorts of intellectual endeavours. However, as much un PC as this may be and controversial, the best of women are simply not better than the best of men. Thus, excepting personal liberty of choice, focusing instead on the grander picture of division of labour, based on matters of fact only, society would do better if women did what they are best at, that is nurture their children, except for many women who are better than their husband to use their brains to gain resources so that it justifies for the husband to perform the function of nurturing the children, and men do their best which is to provide the resources for their wives to nurture their children.

What is the alternative? That men look after the children?