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The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

theamericangenius.com

81–90 of 114 posts

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#81
post #2

Or it could be that people are just tipped out. I hadn't been to a strip club in several years but I got dragged to one a few months back by a friend and I got to tell you the money that these girls wanted seem to astronomically high for the service that they were providing. Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. The girls turn their nose up at a couple dollars on…

I don't know what kind of strip club you attended but the "average rate" for a 1-on1 dance is $20 (sometimes with an additional fee for the private room). That's for 1 song, typically 4-5 minutes. That equates to about $240 for an entire hour. Paying for a stripper to spend an hour with you is excessive, unless you are a high roller or are (as many are) expecting more than just a dance. Maybe you visited a "high end"…

But the point stands. That rate is not great compared to legal brothels and escorts in Amsterdam.

Someone living in NYC can fly there for $400. That same flight to Las Vegas is not much less money.

This is why industry-specific indexes don’t work. It can’t capture industry-specific changes to the offering and its surrounding alternatives.

E.h., clubs could be empty due to consolidation and lack of competition and abnormally high prices compared to the past.

E.g., the Big Mac index falls apart if McDonald’s changes its business model away from low cost food and more toward higher pricing and lower volume.

E.g., legal brothels in Nevada are becoming more rare as more shut down and the difficulty of starting a new one is high.

E.g., the stripper index could be inaccurate if more or fewer men are in happy sexually active relationships. You’d have control for that variable.

E.g., the stripper index could be irrelevant in Las Vegas as it transitions to being more of a family, sports, and conference destination rather than a bachelor’s playground.

E.g., the stripper index could become less relevant as more men trend away from being comfortable with the idea of strip clubs in the first place (just like how Hooters went from nearly a family restaurant to being super weird, and how Playboy used to be a respectable mainstream publication but is now much less so).

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#82

There are more people struggling these days than the mainstream news reports. The lines at the food banks where I live are much longer than they were before COVID. One of the local food banks says they're distributing three times as many meals per month as they served before the pandemic. And this is an area of relatively high employment. People working service jobs simply can't afford the basics, and that's a proble…

There’s no such implied promise, it’s the other way around: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour

This sounds vaguely like the observation that retail checkout employees get stupider when the economy is good, because everyone with 2 brain cells to rub together moves to more gainful employment, and walmart has to really start scraping the bottom of the barrel

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#83
post #20

As I have no idea what percentage of people frequent strip clubs, I'm mostly wondering if the sample size (and especially the demographic) is big enough to even be representative of anything. Then again I'm not from the US and not generally visiting strip clubs. It's a topic that doesn't come up very often either.

I don't think the percentage matters; it's the difference between money being and not being spent. It's not my scene, but I am guessing this correlates with highly disposable income -- people who make too much too easily so they can throw it away just as freely. If that stops flowing, I think it's a decent indicator of a general slow-down.

Yeah sure, but naively I'd still assume "tips for pizza delivery people" would be a much better indicator as it would be a much broader target audience.

Then again, maybe it's too mundane again and with the tipping culture (as far as I have heard about it) there is much less spread in tips than where I live.

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#84
post #79
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imho, inflation has a lot less to do with the perception than bimodal income separation. Either you're "fine" or you're very much not fine. Which is why you get people talking past each other.

Nah, inflation sucks across the board. The human mind and human society don’t really react well to things changing so fast. And since losses weigh higher than gains, and everything needs to be renegotiated, nobody feels good about the outcome even if they come up even. This holds for people at the top and people at the bottom.

I'm not sure how much the high end of households whose assets have appreciated with inflation are feeling the suck. I think there are a fair number of households at the top that are feeling better off as reflected in their spending increases in spending in sectors such as travel which can be attributed to a wealth effect[1], as older and wealthier households see their assets increase in value and their confidence increase.

Increases in asset prices spurn consumer spending in wealthier households relative to their proportion of assets owned - the top 10% of households own 62% of the assets.[2]

[1]https://apnews.com/article/inflation-economy-wealth-rates-fe...

[2]https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#85
post #35

I found a similar article from June of 2022 about the stripper index signaling a recession, so clearly it's not a very good indicator. A stripper is typically a short-term career, so it wouldn't make sense to rely on observations made over such a short period. Maybe things are just returning to normal after a boom, and none of the interviewed people were around pre-boom. The personal savings rate, https://fred.stloui…

Q1 and Q2 2022 had negative GDP growth [0]. Ignoring the debate about whether or not that constitutes a "true recession", as the article mentions this index indicates the economy is experiencing strain and the timelines match up to the previous citation you mention. To me that would indicate it has some level of accurate representation. [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/07/28/1113649843/gdp-2q-economy-202...

Yet nominal GDP growth and real GDI were high and positive (respectively). GDI should equal GDP so it was a unique situation, not really indicative of any additional non-energy financial strain.

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#86
post #2

Or it could be that people are just tipped out. I hadn't been to a strip club in several years but I got dragged to one a few months back by a friend and I got to tell you the money that these girls wanted seem to astronomically high for the service that they were providing. Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. The girls turn their nose up at a couple dollars on…

Computer Guy explaining the international sex entertainment economy to a stripper has got to be pretty close to peak Computer Guy.

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#87
post #5

This is a weirdly common type of article; given that the long-prophesied US recession remains stubbornly absent by any normal metrics, people just make up new ones to claim that there is a recession. > Many quirky (and weirdly accurate) economic indicators help forecast the economy. For example, if an AFC team wins the Superbowl, the stock market will decline the following year. While there doesn’t seem to be a direc…

> given that the long-prophesied US recession remains stubbornly absent by any normal metrics, people just make up new ones to claim that there is a recession. So are you of the mind that we'll never see a recession again, or...? The point is prediction . Once the "normal metrics" are in the tank (because they are lagging indicators), we are already in recession.

We had a recession 4 years ago. Growth is good, consumers are spending, and unemployment is at a ~50 year low.

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#89

Wonder how a recession will affect the election

A recession would be bad for the incumbent.

But then again, the last incumbent oversaw a 15% unemployment rate and almost won reelection when 3,000 people were dying every day so, perhaps it wouldn't be.

Re: The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

#90
post #26
post #18

I think it has more to do with OnlyFans.

OnlyFans has been around since 2016. The entertainers in the article are talking about a steep decline in the past ~year.

No, they haven't. The first tweets about this (when this bullshit "indicator" went viral on Twitter) were in 2021.
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