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

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

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

#181

Post by pyre »

snowbird122 wrote: post #169
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.

This poster didn't say that anyone could be good at staying at home. They said anyone can stay at home. I think this is true and don't understand the downvotes.

Saying 'no' to making it more socially acceptable for a man to be a stay-at-home dad, and then going on about how 'not everyone can do X' seems to make the following statement indirectly:

  Only men are capable of (starting up a company | working at a senior
  level | working at a technical level). There are plenty of people who
  could never achieve that level of competence (namely women), they
  can stay at home.
Unless the poster is making that (very sexist) statement, then I fail to see how he/she is in disagreement with the poster they were responding to. Saying that it shouldn't be socially acceptable for people with great skills to let them languish by becoming a stay-at-home dad is not the same as saying that it should not be socially acceptable at all for a man to be a stay-at-home dad. [ Though in general, the idea that society should pressure people to make decisions that are only in society's best short-term interests. Who's to say that someone working at the 'senior level' is making a larger contribution to society then someone that stays at home to raise the next generation? ]

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

#182

Post by stcredzero »

dgabriel wrote: post #166
stcredzero wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women trafficked to the United States have been forced to have sex with 400-500 men to pay off $40,000 in debt for their passage. I knew a couple of individuals in college who, through their time as a student, had sex with about that many people recreationally. (In one case, it was in the biblical sense, and yes I have been tested and cleared many times since then.)

There's a pretty clear difference between wanting to sleep with someone, and being forced to sleep with someone by a trafficker.

There's a pretty clear difference between a report of numbers and a postion that the voluntary activities of a student are equivalent to someone who's been trafficked.

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

#183

Post by gaius »

petercooper wrote: post #121
jacquesm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netherlands.

You have to pay 200-300€ for health insurance in .nl (or is this just a tax taken out up front)? Wow, my complaints about the UK are ratcheting down a notch, I don't pay a bean, except for dental (as and when).

If you're not paying NI then surely your dental is also covered?

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

#184

Post by todayiamme »

wake_up_sticky wrote: post #99
todayiamme wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>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…

While I agree that we shouldn't put people into boxes (figuratively or literally), the problem with what you're suggesting is that people become depressed when they don't know what society expects of them. This may be inconvenient, but it's true. Telling someone, "You can do whatever you want with your life; we're not going to tell you what to do" is effectively telling them, "We're not going to tell you what society…

Actually, this is a fallacy that you start believing the traditional parenting point of view. I think that a parent's role is basically teaching the kids how to make the right choice. Not making the choice for them.

It's true that early on you need to nurture and protect them by taking stuff into your hands, but by the age they need to start thinking about stuff like this. They should be mature enough to do that, because you can't be there for them all their life telling them what to do, can you? It's just that your role as a nurturer needs to evolve with time as the dynamics of the relationship changes, and you need to respect that. Not fight it.

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

#185

Post by eru »

loewenskind wrote: post #65
tome wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you think those decreases are paid for? I would have thought they would have been paid for by increases in efficiency (largely due to new technology).

There are efficiency explosions now and again that create huge shifts, but mostly you just get little tweaks here and there (e.g. increase factory output by 5% or even 50%). Not numbers that can touch sacking half your staff or replacing all of them with a production provider in e.g. China.

You know why the Chinese have lower wages at the moment? Because they are less productive.

As they become more productive, their wages are going up, too.

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

#186

Post by eru »

brc wrote: post #66
aresant wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you read the whole book you'll find much of those statistics in there. They explore the high cost escort option as a way of looking at economic principles. I don't find the book anything but an easy read and a different take on subject matter. The authors didn't murder any prostitutes. If you want to complain, try your state government and ask for legal brothels.

Or move to Europe.

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

#187

Post by loewenskind »

eru wrote: post #185
loewenskind wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are efficiency explosions now and again that create huge shifts, but mostly you just get little tweaks here and there (e.g. increase factory output by 5% or even 50%). Not numbers that can touch sacking half your staff or replacing all of them with a production provider in e.g. China.

You know why the Chinese have lower wages at the moment? Because they are less productive. As they become more productive, their wages are going up, too.

Completely wrong. If that were the case then the cost of developing 10k cheap electronic gadgets would be the same in the US vs. China. The US workers would cost more but make more in the same time.

This is not the case at all. The Chinese can produce vastly more items than the US can for the same price/time. Do you have any examples where some US company can produce things as such an improved production speed compared to China?

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

#188

Post by eru »

loewenskind wrote: post #187
eru wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know why the Chinese have lower wages at the moment? Because they are less productive. As they become more productive, their wages are going up, too.

Completely wrong. If that were the case then the cost of developing 10k cheap electronic gadgets would be the same in the US vs. China. The US workers would cost more but make more in the same time. This is not the case at all. The Chinese can produce vastly more items than the US can for the same price/time. Do you have any examples where some US company can produce things as such an improved production speed compar…

You are right that richer countries are not more productive in all sectors. E.g. a Swiss hair cut won't be as superior to a Somalian one, as the differences in wages suggest.

My guts tell me that the US is more productive than China in, say, software development and probably finance. But don't trust my guts. Do some research yourself.

A quick search for "productivity US china" turned up "U.S. Leads Productivity Ranking; China Gains" (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/business/worldbusiness/04o...).

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

#189

Post by parenthesis »

gaius wrote: post #118
parenthesis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If `civil rights' means `equal (to whites) rights for non-whites' and `gay rights' means `equal (to straights) rights for gays', then the civil rights and gay rights movements are both `equalism'. A group which sees itself as oppressed can't just wishy-washily campaign under a banner of `equalism' if it wants to effect change. It must first identify itself as a group of people with something in common, and which is s…

But civil rights is not "black rights", do you see? -isms, generally, exist to advance the interests of their sponsors, to the detriment of society as a whole.

Ah whoops - that was a mistake. But my point still stands that to advance equality can require that a group organise under the banner of an -ism or of x rights.

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

#190

Post by petercooper »

gaius wrote: post #183
petercooper wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay 200-300€ for health insurance in .nl (or is this just a tax taken out up front)? Wow, my complaints about the UK are ratcheting down a notch, I don't pay a bean, except for dental (as and when).

If you're not paying NI then surely your dental is also covered?

I do pay NI, but I don't class it as a medical expense. It's basically a second income tax and payroll tax mixed into one.
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