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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

#191
post #155
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm just saying you have to be able to hold down a job well enough that food is not the primary cost driver for your living expenses. You don't have to be at a HN-level of intelligence/industriousness to do that either, but you do have to be reasonably intelligent.

If you can't hold down a decent job, odds are you aren't going to be much use in the kitchen.

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

#192
post #128
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is cheaper if it's other people's taxes . That's why no-one campaigns for tax cuts so they can afford childcare.

To make it more explicit, subsidized child care is cheaper for parents , because everybody pays taxes, but only parents receive the subsidies.

A society without children is called dead the next generation. Not that I'm pro-subsidies (never used any) but I can see why there would be some collective advantage about the previous generation having had children (that's why you're here...) and we extend that to the next. This also benefits those without children because they end up getting a pension from other people's working children. (your pension typically isn't money that you put in the bank, contrary to what most people seem to think).

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

#193

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Totally different clientele. Ask this lady http://www.realprincessdiaries.com/

If you're at work you probably don't want to click that link.

Yeah ... sorry guys, NSFW.

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

#194
post #186
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or Nevada.

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

#195
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ranki…

One has to be careful how one measures these things. It's easy to get into tautology land ("Who is more productive? The more expensive one. How do you know they're more productive? Because they're more expensive").

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

#196
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ranki…

One has to be careful how one measures these things. It's easy to get into tautology land ("Who is more productive? The more expensive one. How do you know they're more productive? Because they're more expensive").

Indeed. Though if you can compete on the world market and be more expensive, there's got to be something to justify that.

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

#197
post #150
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many jobs that pay that sort of cash. They're just not easy to get. It's that old 10,000 hours of practice thing again. If you're willing to build up a lot of experience in an arcane technical field that is in continuous demand, you can easily get that sort of cash, particularly in short-term fly-in-and-fix-the-thing gigs. I know of COBOL programmers in a bank that make $150/hr because they are irreplaceable now.…

I met a COBOL programmer from a bank a few months ago. He was driving a taxi.

He didn't know how to sell himself, then.

I've seen job postings here in Uruguay that pay 4x the average local programming wage for anyone that knows COBOL decently (about U$ 3000 monthly)

He might even be willing to relocate here for that money (you can live princely here with that much). It was for state telecom company ANTEL, last year (I learned some COBOL at university, but not enough) .

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

#198
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I met a COBOL programmer from a bank a few months ago. He was driving a taxi.

He didn't know how to sell himself, then. I've seen job postings here in Uruguay that pay 4x the average local programming wage for anyone that knows COBOL decently (about U$ 3000 monthly) He might even be willing to relocate here for that money (you can live princely here with that much). It was for state telecom company ANTEL, last year (I learned some COBOL at university, but not enough) .

It might not be hard for him to relocate to Uruguay; he lives here in Buenos Aires. But he might have other problems that are at the root of being a COBOL programmer (e.g. lack of interest in new things, lack of aptitude for programming, I have no idea) and he was about a month away from retiring anyway.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got me thinking on changing professions.

You do not seem to have got the point at all. It is not about the profession, it is all about decommoditization. The first and most important thing she (unknowingly) did right was to avoid having a pimp in the first place. The second important thing she did was to differentiate her service and offer it to the premium market. You can follow the same strategy as a teacher. Refuse to lecture a class of 50+ students* (wh…

Changing professions doesn't mean into prostitution. I'm not too sure of the demand here of balding, slightly overweight pale western men.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bec…

The problem is that there are an overwhelming number of choices when it comes to what to do with one's life. Parents need to at least make it clear that there's a relatively small subset of these choices which are acceptable. (Not a handful of choices, but maybe a couple dozen or so.)
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