The pile of cash is in the 401k in case we get a decline and get an entry point. I do expect they'll raise tax rates sort of nuking our 401k's if they don't try to rob them outright.
I'm very sorry about your disability. Even in good times, it's not enough to survive on your own.
I feel more comfortable with a paid off house. It's emotional.
For now I balance paying ahead some and saving some- when the remaining balance makes sense, I'll nuke it.
By having superfast computers on the floor and looking at the orders coming in, they buy and sell just before the orders execute.
This would be like observing a goal was clearly going to occur (or not occur) and then betting a goal would occur (or not occur) in the milliseconds before the goal actually occured.
I don't see your dream free market happening Falcon. The free market will converge... and in the rest of the world- a couple billion people are living on under $4k per year. There will be rich winners but its likely that the middle class will continue to shrink.
For the citation just look at the various financial advisor newsletters for the secular bear market. We are basically mirroring Japan right now-- likely to have another 10 rough years. Then who knows. If that won't suffice, google "secular bear market" and you'll get pages of citations. Still won't do... okay forbes.com, warren buffet, "But it is pretty much agreed that when the market topped out in March 2000 it was the end of the long 1982-2000 secular bull market, and beginning of a 2000 to who knows when secular bear market. As Warren Buffett said, and others predicted at the time, "The next 17 years will be quite different from the last 17 years." i.e. Buffet is looking at 2017ish.
Income stocks *were* a good place for your retirement money. They may be again- but for the near to mid term future, you risk losing 20 to 30% of your retirement money owning in come stocks. You risk losing just as much in bonds because once interest rates start rising they are going to lose a lot of value. And you can't get better than about 2% in CD's. Municipal bonds have a strong risk of bankruptcy right now (and for several more years). Cash is also risky due to inflation- $100k could buy you a cup of coffee in 20 years.
Yes, I agree on dividend stocks. I like GIS myself. 100+ years. I don't like the look of AEE. If you invested ANY time between 1998 and 2009, you have lost THIRTY TO FIFTY PERCENT of your money. Given that it underperformed many other stocks since the march rally, I'd pick something else... like GIS with a trailing dividend of about 3%, a 100 year plus history, an excellent product (FOOD.. you know Cheerios and stuff) and a lot of potential for international growth. But even there, the money would be at risk. There could be some terrible lawsuit tomorrow and GIS could take a 20% haircut before you could get out (even with trailing stops these days-- they are more like "suggestions" than orders when the HFT trading programs are playing your stock.)
My point is- right now- and for nearly the next decade there is no safe place right now, our incomes will be flat to down, inflation is going to eat away at our incomes on top of that, the market is likely to be very hard to trade or invest, bonds are going to suck as well, and even sitting in cash has huge risks.
It's just a hard time.
I'm using a mixture of approaches... dividends as you suggest (I'm 17 years from retirement), some dollar cost averaging, a big pile of cash, and a big pile in overseas investements as a hedge. And I'm getting debt free-- no house debt, no car debt. I'm already free of debt other than those and both of those are now quite low (I might be out in 24 months).
How much is a thousand dollars invested in 2000 worth now? It's a little over negative 30%. What's the inflation rate since 2000? About 25% (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)
The current market behavior is likely to go on for another nine years in a secular bear market before we get another secular bull market. What's next? a few years of 9000-10000, another stop at 6000?
If you have 30 years-- perhaps. But with the algobots, the market is getting very dangerous for the common investor. And consider how much the world has changed since 1980. How many companies have gone bankrupt.
It's generally a bad idea to have your retirement income in stocks. You get adverse selection-- i.e. you sell more when the market is down. Of course, right now bonds suck. There is even talk of municipal bonds going bankrupt.
A lot of what you are saying is good sound advice-- in a world where the government isn't risking hyperinflation. It gives me fits. I have some overseas, some short, some long and a lot in cash right now. I'm nearing debt free and then I want to set up solar power. Electricity rates have basically tripled since 1980 (4.5c/kwh to 13c/kwh today).
I figure no debt, pension, 401k, ira's, social security, possibly a 20 hour a month or 10 hour a week job job somewhere, plus free electricity and I should be okay unless some other major medical issue crops up.
--- anyway... We can't sustain our income advantage over the rest of the world. The difference is too large.
All you need is one good bout of inflation and you can kiss your retirement goodbye. Combined with low rates on savings, there is not a lot you can do to avoid that freight train on the way (it also wipes out pensions and social security too).
On the rest..
>But how capable are they? They are capable. They have issues. They are half a world away. But it's idiotic chauvinism to assume they won't be equivalent within five or six years.
>Impossible. Let me put it differently. The money it costs to get a degree only makes sense if you can get a better paying job with it. If there are 15 math majors for one math job, the compensation isn't there. If there are 15 math majors and another 25 math majors in china and india willing to work for $10k a year, a math degree really doesn't make much sense. These 2 billion people are as smart as we are. By the numbers, they have more smart people than we do. Education is purely in the brain- you can use it anywhere. You can live where costs are low.
Right now, many college graduates who are deeply in debt are not finding jobs (and havn't been). We have a glut.
>Chinese wages and pay were raising, Absolutely. I'm not saying our supervisors and team leads drop to $293 a month (foxconn first-line employees, line leaders and supervisors will rise to 2,000 yuan ($293) per month with the recent raises after the 13th suicide) vs a typical $5000 a month for 1st world supervisors (many supervisors make $6000 a month and some make as much as $8000 a month).
Their raises will rise-- ours will mostly stagnate-- and inflation will eat away at our purchasing power. If their salary doubles every year... $300->$600->$1200->$2400->$4800 it would take 5 years for them to achieve parity. And it's not doubling-- it's going up about 20 to 30%. They are going to be cheaper a long time (a decade at least- probably two decades).
And as I said above, I think $40k robots which work for 3 years without sickdays or breakdowns are not far off. And they won't need supervisors to approve vacation and deal with interpersonal squabbles.
Yes, but they prefer all OTHER companies to provide those domestic jobs.
They just want to mine the money...
If taxes are raised to the point where the product is
$2 foreign labor + $3 taxes = $5 vs $5 local labor + $0 taxes = $5
then there would not be a benefit to producing over seas.
Problem? No external market for our goods (Smoot Hawley).
Basic problem(s)?
* China until last week was suppressing their currency. (Destroyed a lot of american jobs- will probably cost china a half a trillion dollars tho) * Without China currency being suppressed they STILL will cost less. Ultimately our wages (and then costs) must drop towards chinese levels.
* and then (from WAY DOWN TOWN) will come inexpensive robotics capable of replacing 80% of current manual jobs. Fundamental problem? Going forward, we may quickly reach a point where we don't NEED more than 30% of the population to "work". And we certainly won't need 70% of the population to have advanced degrees- we already have too many degreed people. China and India are pumping them out like crazy.
We probably don't even NEED all the geniuses we'll have - at some point they just start to get in each others way.
Staph infections are everywhere. Floating in the air, door handles, they take root on you if you have any moisture- love hair follicles as a home- love sweaty people.
Anyway-- this was sort of life changing for me. If I'd known about this 20 years ago, it would have made a big difference.
Dental hygiene is not to be ignored either- it can add 3-5 healthy fun years to your healthy fun live span ( bacteria from your mouth damage your heart over time).
Flossing helps prevent the development of coral reef like hard "reefs" at the bottom of each of your teeth too. With those premounted blue flossers, it's very easy to floss.
On a related note... after a lifetime of decent hygiene but still stinky armpits that overcame even the strongest deodorant, I stumbled across an amazing discovery.
Simple rubbing alchohol.
I started using it for blemishes that I was still getting on my chest and flanks on the advice of a friend who saw on a wrestling site that they were probably staff infections.
I impulsively tried it on my underarms (reasoning that they stank because of bacteria) and the results were instantaneous.
I dropped to zero scent (and long periods of zero blemishes).
Highly recommended and very inexpensive-- about $2 a month plus a one time purchase of a plastic spray bottle for $2. (Found the best was from beauty store).
---
On topic--- I've been telling people not to enter CS for the last 5 years. Companies no longer value CS graduates. There is no job security. There is no status. There are few girls to date (tho more than engineering). You FREQUENTLY must work holidays, nights, and weekends and these days they call the work "scheduled" and do not even give overtime for it.
I have friends who are college dropouts who are excellent (and their companies know it).
However, a lot of people lack the grit needed to finish a hard multi-year project.
A degree is one way to know you are not a flake.
It's sad tho, because a degree really should be about who you are as a person. When it was, we could afford them.
Now that they have become a "magic lottery ticket" they have been overbid.
A degree is worth 4 years of your life living poor and a few grand in debt in exchange for spending 4 years thinking really hard, having fun philosophizing, making a group of friends you may keep 20 years, developing the ability to absorb lots of material fast, and becoming well-rounded so you can appreciate your life more fully.
That's why I got mine. It was a moral imperative that I get mine.
It changed me from the blue collar person I grew up as (and thanks to lots of love and support from my mom) to the person who I am that has wept and howled at shakespeare, appreciates Haydn, who's watching Salden's excellent "Justice" philosophy series, and who still likes low brow humor, getting drunk, and rock concerts. It's like being fully alive vs living with blinders on.
And yup, my employers still employ me to these days for the incredible grit I honed in college. When things are hard, that's when I go in to drag the project across the finish line. And it's not through writing mountains of code any more (hasn't been for several years). I use developers as the finely honed tools they are in a role as a conductor more than a musician.
The most likely cause for a revolution at this time is termination of unemployment benefits for the 10% of the workforce which can't find a job.
Considering the trillions they are throwing away elsewhere, that $100 to $140 billion is pennies on the dollar vs sending the national guard and paying police overtime to maintain order.
There are a lot of graduations below outright revolt. Increase in crime (with resulting increases in policing costs and incarceration costs ($30k a year to house a robber vs $12k to $18k unemployment benefits), protests (increased police costs), riots (increased police and national guard and property damage), vandalism, petty theft, drug abuse, etc.
I met them socially through ultimate, everquest (!?!), and massage (I'm a massage therapist).
Two had daddy issues. All were drug users and one had a severe drug issue that cost her a good job. One was a love addict (narcissist). None had pimps. All had netted at least enough money to buy houses ($100kish). None were active any more and had settled down to "day jobs" as accountants, clerks, and massage therapists. Two were married and the husbands knew about their past. Both cheated on their husbands.
All had issues connecting emotionally in relationships and were fun as friends but you got the feeling they had a mask and were acting at times. I judged that they would be very dangerous to get involved with (get your heart ripped out... ala "Roxanne").
All had had at least three children and had given one or more children up for adoption.
I felt the job caused two of them problems while the third I felt was probably messed up before the job. One distinct difference for all of them vs the type you talk about is that they had been able to choose who they slept with (for the most part). But all had probably slept with hundreds (if not thousands) of men.
---
All jobs have risks. Farmers die at a very high rate- and often while young. Terrible horrible deaths pulled into threshers and so on. We all know about alaskan fishermen. The police and firemen have very high fatality rates comparably (about #11 and below on the list of dangerous jobs).
I think saying, "Prostitutes are psychologically damaged women who are abused and manipulated by men." is completely unfair and at most only speaks of a subset of the profession. And I think that occurs because it is currently illegal.
I think prostitution varies from the street hooker pulling in tiny amounts of money, being beaten, getting sick, etc as you say to the mid range girls who make six figure plus annual incomes, live well to the high end elliot spitzer type girls who apparently pull in thousands of dollars at a time. I think if it were legal, the low end would not be so nasty, there would be regular health checks, and pimps would go out of business the same way drug lords would if pot and cocaine were legalized (relatively tiny markets for the other drugs).
I respect your opinion and think it is valid for a large slice of prostitutes. The fact that prostitution is illegal has not reduce the frequency of prostitution however. I still see streetwalkers occasionally in this day of craigslist and who knows what other methods folks use to hook up.
And it is also about semantics and favors the wealthy.
If you cover living expenses for your girlfriend (food, lodging, travel), it's not prostitution. Even if she's only your girlfriend for the current semester.
If you take a girl out on a date at a $175 a person restaurant and have sex with her... it's not prostitution.
Expensive gifts.. nope.
It's really a very restricted set of "money for sex" behaviors which count as prostitution.
Something about the short duration and multiple boyfriends plays apart-- but even there some women have multiple male sex partners, who spend money on them, but no one considers it prostitution.
A lot of people who say they would never whore themselves out for money just haven't been seriously offered hard cash right there in front of them to whore themselves out.
From the stories I've heard over my lifetime, the range seems to be $1,000 to $10,000.
A girl I was talking to about this a few years ago said that a man once offered her $1,000 and she had an orgasm right there sitting in the chair in the bar.
I think my figure is a bit higher. I have good circumstances so it would need to be high six figures.
But who knows... confronted with a pile of $150k, tax free...
Yea, I know i want to use a search engine which up front tells me it will censor for the powers that be. And that it gives results biased and censored to be pro-communist chinese government position.
Well then it will be something like having the ideogram for "Friendship" tattooed and it's really the ideogram for "Rock" or "Love" or "Horny Goatweed".
Khan is likely to be ignoring the inherent conflicts in his religion with the many other religions (which the collective members various religions do when they lack the power to eradicate other religions) or he may be a deist who believes god exists and sort of rolls his own religion based on a foundation of some other religion (perhaps islam) where he picks the parts he likes and ignores the parts he doesn't like. By the adherents of the religion, he's a heretic and viewed as going to hell (or not going to heaven).
I'm looking forward to listening to some of his lectures.
Right now I'm watching/listening to Michael Sandel ("Justice") and it's an easily accessible philosophy class in the spirit of Khan's easily accessible math classes.
Slashdot Mirror
I've only recently considered gardening.
I shoot for a year's emergency cash.
The pile of cash is in the 401k in case we get a decline and get an entry point. I do expect they'll raise tax rates sort of nuking our 401k's if they don't try to rob them outright.
I'm very sorry about your disability. Even in good times, it's not enough to survive on your own.
I feel more comfortable with a paid off house. It's emotional.
For now I balance paying ahead some and saving some- when the remaining balance makes sense, I'll nuke it.
By having superfast computers on the floor and looking at the orders coming in, they buy and sell just before the orders execute.
This would be like observing a goal was clearly going to occur (or not occur) and then betting a goal would occur (or not occur) in the milliseconds before the goal actually occured.
I don't see your dream free market happening Falcon.
The free market will converge... and in the rest of the world- a couple billion people are living on under $4k per year. There will be rich winners but its likely that the middle class will continue to shrink.
For the citation just look at the various financial advisor newsletters for the secular bear market. We are basically mirroring Japan right now-- likely to have another 10 rough years. Then who knows. If that won't suffice, google "secular bear market" and you'll get pages of citations. Still won't do... okay forbes.com, warren buffet, "But it is pretty much agreed that when the market topped out in March 2000 it was the end of the long 1982-2000 secular bull market, and beginning of a 2000 to who knows when secular bear market. As Warren Buffett said, and others predicted at the time, "The next 17 years will be quite different from the last 17 years." i.e. Buffet is looking at 2017ish.
Income stocks *were* a good place for your retirement money. They may be again- but for the near to mid term future, you risk losing 20 to 30% of your retirement money owning in come stocks. You risk losing just as much in bonds because once interest rates start rising they are going to lose a lot of value. And you can't get better than about 2% in CD's. Municipal bonds have a strong risk of bankruptcy right now (and for several more years). Cash is also risky due to inflation- $100k could buy you a cup of coffee in 20 years.
Yes, I agree on dividend stocks. I like GIS myself. 100+ years. I don't like the look of AEE. If you invested ANY time between 1998 and 2009, you have lost THIRTY TO FIFTY PERCENT of your money. Given that it underperformed many other stocks since the march rally, I'd pick something else... like GIS with a trailing dividend of about 3%, a 100 year plus history, an excellent product (FOOD.. you know Cheerios and stuff) and a lot of potential for international growth. But even there, the money would be at risk. There could be some terrible lawsuit tomorrow and GIS could take a 20% haircut before you could get out (even with trailing stops these days-- they are more like "suggestions" than orders when the HFT trading programs are playing your stock.)
My point is- right now- and for nearly the next decade there is no safe place right now, our incomes will be flat to down, inflation is going to eat away at our incomes on top of that, the market is likely to be very hard to trade or invest, bonds are going to suck as well, and even sitting in cash has huge risks.
It's just a hard time.
I'm using a mixture of approaches ... dividends as you suggest (I'm 17 years from retirement), some dollar cost averaging, a big pile of cash, and a big pile in overseas investements as a hedge. And I'm getting debt free-- no house debt, no car debt. I'm already free of debt other than those and both of those are now quite low (I might be out in 24 months).
How much is a thousand dollars invested in 2000 worth now?
It's a little over negative 30%.
What's the inflation rate since 2000? About 25% (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/)
The current market behavior is likely to go on for another nine years in a secular bear market before we get another secular bull market.
What's next? a few years of 9000-10000, another stop at 6000?
If you have 30 years-- perhaps. But with the algobots, the market is getting very dangerous for the common investor.
And consider how much the world has changed since 1980. How many companies have gone bankrupt.
It's generally a bad idea to have your retirement income in stocks. You get adverse selection-- i.e. you sell more when the market is down.
Of course, right now bonds suck. There is even talk of municipal bonds going bankrupt.
A lot of what you are saying is good sound advice-- in a world where the government isn't risking hyperinflation. It gives me fits. I have some overseas, some short, some long and a lot in cash right now. I'm nearing debt free and then I want to set up solar power. Electricity rates have basically tripled since 1980 (4.5c/kwh to 13c/kwh today).
I figure no debt, pension, 401k, ira's, social security, possibly a 20 hour a month or 10 hour a week job job somewhere, plus free electricity and I should be okay unless some other major medical issue crops up.
---
anyway...
We can't sustain our income advantage over the rest of the world. The difference is too large.
All you need is one good bout of inflation and you can kiss your retirement goodbye.
Combined with low rates on savings, there is not a lot you can do to avoid that freight train on the way (it also wipes out pensions and social security too).
On the rest..
>But how capable are they?
They are capable. They have issues. They are half a world away. But it's idiotic chauvinism to assume they won't be equivalent within five or six years.
>Impossible.
Let me put it differently. The money it costs to get a degree only makes sense if you can get a better paying job with it. If there are 15 math majors for one math job, the compensation isn't there. If there are 15 math majors and another 25 math majors in china and india willing to work for $10k a year, a math degree really doesn't make much sense. These 2 billion people are as smart as we are. By the numbers, they have more smart people than we do. Education is purely in the brain- you can use it anywhere. You can live where costs are low.
Right now, many college graduates who are deeply in debt are not finding jobs (and havn't been). We have a glut.
>Chinese wages and pay were raising,
Absolutely. I'm not saying our supervisors and team leads drop to $293 a month (foxconn first-line employees, line leaders and supervisors will rise to 2,000 yuan ($293) per month with the recent raises after the 13th suicide) vs a typical $5000 a month for 1st world supervisors (many supervisors make $6000 a month and some make as much as $8000 a month).
Their raises will rise-- ours will mostly stagnate-- and inflation will eat away at our purchasing power. If their salary doubles every year...
$300->$600->$1200->$2400->$4800 it would take 5 years for them to achieve parity. And it's not doubling-- it's going up about 20 to 30%. They are going to be cheaper a long time (a decade at least- probably two decades).
And as I said above, I think $40k robots which work for 3 years without sickdays or breakdowns are not far off. And they won't need supervisors to approve vacation and deal with interpersonal squabbles.
Yes, but they prefer all OTHER companies to provide those domestic jobs.
They just want to mine the money...
If taxes are raised to the point where the product is
$2 foreign labor + $3 taxes = $5
vs
$5 local labor + $0 taxes = $5
then there would not be a benefit to producing over seas.
Problem? No external market for our goods (Smoot Hawley).
Basic problem(s)?
* China until last week was suppressing their currency. (Destroyed a lot of american jobs- will probably cost china a half a trillion dollars tho)
* Without China currency being suppressed they STILL will cost less. Ultimately our wages (and then costs) must drop towards chinese levels.
* and then (from WAY DOWN TOWN) will come inexpensive robotics capable of replacing 80% of current manual jobs. Fundamental problem? Going forward, we may quickly reach a point where we don't NEED more than 30% of the population to "work". And we certainly won't need 70% of the population to have advanced degrees- we already have too many degreed people. China and India are pumping them out like crazy.
We probably don't even NEED all the geniuses we'll have - at some point they just start to get in each others way.
It's not the file sharing links.
It's the attitude. They are incredibly cool and fearless.
This is just another step along the way from their lawyer letters.
naive and foolish - perhaps.
Some day they will be crushed.. but it will have been a brilliant arc.
~ It's not my goddamn planet! Understand, monkeyboy?~
Grr... staph.
Staph infections are everywhere. Floating in the air, door handles, they take root on you if you have any moisture- love hair follicles as a home- love sweaty people.
Anyway-- this was sort of life changing for me. If I'd known about this 20 years ago, it would have made a big difference.
Dental hygiene is not to be ignored either- it can add 3-5 healthy fun years to your healthy fun live span ( bacteria from your mouth damage your heart over time).
Flossing helps prevent the development of coral reef like hard "reefs" at the bottom of each of your teeth too. With those premounted blue flossers, it's very easy to floss.
On a related note... after a lifetime of decent hygiene but still stinky armpits that overcame even the strongest deodorant, I stumbled across an amazing discovery.
Simple rubbing alchohol.
I started using it for blemishes that I was still getting on my chest and flanks on the advice of a friend who saw on a wrestling site that they were probably staff infections.
I impulsively tried it on my underarms (reasoning that they stank because of bacteria) and the results were instantaneous.
I dropped to zero scent (and long periods of zero blemishes).
Highly recommended and very inexpensive-- about $2 a month plus a one time purchase of a plastic spray bottle for $2. (Found the best was from beauty store).
---
On topic--- I've been telling people not to enter CS for the last 5 years. Companies no longer value CS graduates. There is no job security. There is no status. There are few girls to date (tho more than engineering). You FREQUENTLY must work holidays, nights, and weekends and these days they call the work "scheduled" and do not even give overtime for it.
Go into other fields.
bizarre. 0 score, no specific downmods, and don't see anything offensive.
I have friends who are college dropouts who are excellent (and their companies know it).
However, a lot of people lack the grit needed to finish a hard multi-year project.
A degree is one way to know you are not a flake.
It's sad tho, because a degree really should be about who you are as a person. When it was, we could afford them.
Now that they have become a "magic lottery ticket" they have been overbid.
A degree is worth 4 years of your life living poor and a few grand in debt in exchange for spending 4 years thinking really hard, having fun philosophizing, making a group of friends you may keep 20 years, developing the ability to absorb lots of material fast, and becoming well-rounded so you can appreciate your life more fully.
That's why I got mine. It was a moral imperative that I get mine.
It changed me from the blue collar person I grew up as (and thanks to lots of love and support from my mom) to the person who I am that has wept and howled at shakespeare, appreciates Haydn, who's watching Salden's excellent "Justice" philosophy series, and who still likes low brow humor, getting drunk, and rock concerts. It's like being fully alive vs living with blinders on.
And yup, my employers still employ me to these days for the incredible grit I honed in college. When things are hard, that's when I go in to drag the project across the finish line. And it's not through writing mountains of code any more (hasn't been for several years). I use developers as the finely honed tools they are in a role as a conductor more than a musician.
The most likely cause for a revolution at this time is termination of unemployment benefits for the 10% of the workforce which can't find a job.
Considering the trillions they are throwing away elsewhere, that $100 to $140 billion is pennies on the dollar vs sending the national guard and paying police overtime to maintain order.
There are a lot of graduations below outright revolt. Increase in crime (with resulting increases in policing costs and incarceration costs ($30k a year to house a robber vs $12k to $18k unemployment benefits), protests (increased police costs), riots (increased police and national guard and property damage), vandalism, petty theft, drug abuse, etc.
PB only upsets entertainers.
WL upsets people with real power. People who can make you disappear. People who are willing to do really bad things (TM) to you.
They could have failed to get the SSL or someone could have made them fail to get the SSL.
I don't care if they ask for money. It's an easy way for those of us without free servers and admin time to help out (and yup I've donated).
Most I've known didn't turn out that way.
I met them socially through ultimate, everquest (!?!), and massage (I'm a massage therapist).
Two had daddy issues. All were drug users and one had a severe drug issue that cost her a good job. One was a love addict (narcissist). None had pimps. All had netted at least enough money to buy houses ($100kish). None were active any more and had settled down to "day jobs" as accountants, clerks, and massage therapists. Two were married and the husbands knew about their past. Both cheated on their husbands.
All had issues connecting emotionally in relationships and were fun as friends but you got the feeling they had a mask and were acting at times. I judged that they would be very dangerous to get involved with (get your heart ripped out... ala "Roxanne").
All had had at least three children and had given one or more children up for adoption.
I felt the job caused two of them problems while the third I felt was probably messed up before the job. One distinct difference for all of them vs the type you talk about is that they had been able to choose who they slept with (for the most part). But all had probably slept with hundreds (if not thousands) of men.
---
All jobs have risks. Farmers die at a very high rate- and often while young. Terrible horrible deaths pulled into threshers and so on. We all know about alaskan fishermen. The police and firemen have very high fatality rates comparably (about #11 and below on the list of dangerous jobs).
I think saying, "Prostitutes are psychologically damaged women who are abused and manipulated by men." is completely unfair and at most only speaks of a subset of the profession. And I think that occurs because it is currently illegal.
I think prostitution varies from the street hooker pulling in tiny amounts of money, being beaten, getting sick, etc as you say to the mid range girls who make six figure plus annual incomes, live well to the high end elliot spitzer type girls who apparently pull in thousands of dollars at a time. I think if it were legal, the low end would not be so nasty, there would be regular health checks, and pimps would go out of business the same way drug lords would if pot and cocaine were legalized (relatively tiny markets for the other drugs).
I respect your opinion and think it is valid for a large slice of prostitutes.
The fact that prostitution is illegal has not reduce the frequency of prostitution however. I still see streetwalkers occasionally in this day of craigslist and who knows what other methods folks use to hook up.
Lol. Ladies nights are illegal because of health concerns?
Perhaps for discrimination reasons but not health concerns.
It could be having sex with strangers... but no- women have sex with guys they only met in the last hour. (it's even frequent in some contexts).
It very clearly depends on the intent of both parties. It's almost a thought crime.
And it is also about semantics and favors the wealthy.
If you cover living expenses for your girlfriend (food, lodging, travel), it's not prostitution.
Even if she's only your girlfriend for the current semester.
If you take a girl out on a date at a $175 a person restaurant and have sex with her... it's not prostitution.
Expensive gifts.. nope.
It's really a very restricted set of "money for sex" behaviors which count as prostitution.
Something about the short duration and multiple boyfriends plays apart-- but even there some women have multiple male sex partners, who spend money on them, but no one considers it prostitution.
Do you think people who sell themselves for cash declare all of their income on their IRS forms?
There are public health consequences to "ladies nights" at bars.
People have sex. Often.
A lot of people who say they would never whore themselves out for money just haven't been seriously offered hard cash right there in front of them to whore themselves out.
From the stories I've heard over my lifetime, the range seems to be $1,000 to $10,000.
A girl I was talking to about this a few years ago said that a man once offered her $1,000 and she had an orgasm right there sitting in the chair in the bar.
I think my figure is a bit higher. I have good circumstances so it would need to be high six figures.
But who knows... confronted with a pile of $150k, tax free...
Yea, I know i want to use a search engine which up front tells me it will censor for the powers that be. And that it gives results biased and censored to be pro-communist chinese government position.
Well then it will be something like having the ideogram for "Friendship" tattooed and it's really the ideogram for "Rock" or "Love" or "Horny Goatweed".
I find it amusing that they can spell such names but have loost the ability to spell loose.
Khan is likely to be ignoring the inherent conflicts in his religion with the many other religions (which the collective members various religions do when they lack the power to eradicate other religions) or he may be a deist who believes god exists and sort of rolls his own religion based on a foundation of some other religion (perhaps islam) where he picks the parts he likes and ignores the parts he doesn't like. By the adherents of the religion, he's a heretic and viewed as going to hell (or not going to heaven).
I'm looking forward to listening to some of his lectures.
Right now I'm watching/listening to Michael Sandel ("Justice") and it's an easily accessible philosophy class in the spirit of Khan's easily accessible math classes.