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The Stripper Index: An unorthodox recession measurement

63 points by thyrox 2y ago

elmerfud 2y ago
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 stage and are pushing for $500 private dances. It's just blew my mind. I'm not sure what the house take is but $500 for a private dance for an hour was insane. Senior consultants that solve million dollars problems don't charge that much per hour. I literally had to explain to one of these girls how insane the price was. Because for $500 from the USA if you live near any major airport hub you take a long weekend trip to several Central and South American countries where you can have a whole lot more fun than you can at one of these strip clubs, and you're all in for $500. If that's your chosen form of entertainment, it literally makes no economic sense to spend any money at these strip clubs. I think at one time using a stripper index as a proxy for a recession measurement would have been good. Nowadays I don't think that's a valid way. Too much has changed across the sex entertainment industry, and the attitudes of the customers have also changed because even if all you want to see is girls dancing there's better value for your money with the other options that are available. Many of those options you don't even have to leave your house. Maybe a better proxy for a recession measurement would be something like top golf earnings. Or some other discretionary entertainment place similar to that. Are people going on outings spending their discretionary income in that way or are they saving it or did they just not have it to spend.
- virtue3 2y ago
  I think 500$ for an hour might have been a little more than a dance, and probably inline with what that kind of service offers. If not did you goto one of the top strip clubs in America? that sounds insane. Haven't been to a strip club in a real long time myself tho (absolutely don't have the income nor desire). I think top golf is an interesting metric; I'd be concerned about linking it to two things so addictive - golf addicts and alcohol consumtion. But with the prices at top golf and how much the drinks cost it's probably a good indicator of the sector. One of the downsides of it might be it only targetting people in upper income brackets (golf is an expensive game per se, def not as everyman and top golf isn't really accessible). Then again I can't think of any metric that wont be "inflated" by more well off people consuming something cheaper and less well off people having to use another option (aka mcdonalds).
  - salad-tycoon 2y ago
    I’ve never lived this lifestyle and don’t agree with it but here’s an AMA from a guy who claims to regularly get high end escorts. Supposedly the cost is anywhere from 250-1000 and that might be Australian dollars? https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1cfpcfl/ive_slept_with_24_and_counting_different_high_end/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1cfpcfl/ive_slept_with...
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      Per hour or per night?
      - kipchak 2y ago
        That sounds like per hour. If you're curious about how the whole thing works parts of it are fairly above ground - community support subreddits and advertising websites with rates for example.
    - chasd00 2y ago
      I knew a guy that was a driver for escorts back in college. In the late 90s it was over $1,000/night on average iirc. That included more than just sex though that was also attending a gala or sports game or other social events with you.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      You can just browse the backpage for a bigger city to get an idea of prices. Apparently basic sex pays below $200h/h in Seattle (chosen at random), so those higher prices would likely be for a night/event/high class.
  - _wnax 2y ago
    I encountered similar prices at a Miami Beach club. Initially the security pressed me because I don't drink alcohol, but apparently buying drinks was required (in addition to the cover). In order to satisfy them, I said I would buy a dance, but wasn't given a price until already up in the "VIP" area The price was ridiculous, I don't recall exactly, and I declined, saying I would just leave, and the dancer said in a Russian accent, if I did, she would tell security that I robbed her, since we already entered VIP. I think I paid her like $60 in front of the security guard and walked out. Definitely got mob/extortion vibes from the whole experience. In this example, at least the $50 per 3 minutes or whatever it was, wasn't for anything 'extra' as the VIP area was wide open with no walls, all the victims able to see exactly how scammed everyone was getting.
- mycologos 2y ago
  I think your explanation is missing a competitive element that drives the $500 price. Two similar examples: 1) Maximum City is a book about various people in Mumbai around ~2000. One of them is a sort of stripper (she dances and sometimes dates in a transactional way; I don't remember how explicit it all is). Her analysis is that her clients are partially paying for her but more so for "winning" her over the other clients. The point isn't that one of them takes her shopping and gets to watch her choose handbags; the point is that nobody else gets to go. 2) I read a long article about economic strategies behind webcam shows (by a performer, maybe by Aella?) and the author made two points that I remember: one, it's good to have a stupidly high priced item that a whale can roll in and buy. Two, she had success having a high priced item that "saved" her, e.g., if you pay $X I won't have to eat this gross thing I made. Neither one of these is really about the thing, it's about the feeling of out-competing the other guys there. So while you're $500 example makes sense if somebody is just looking for the dance (or whatever) itself, it doesn't make sense if that person actually wants to "win" over the other patrons (and doesn't view the poorer patrons in the poorer country as real competitors).
  - lupire 2y ago
    Veblen goods.
- josefresco 2y ago
  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" club, or maybe you got taken for a ride (which I've seen happen to rich, inexperienced young men).
  - dangus 2y ago
    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).
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >I literally had to explain to one of these girls how insane the price was I'm sure she loved that. >Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. My friend, paying for "sex" will be one of the last things to go. >Because for $500 from the USA if you live near any major airport hub you take a long weekend trip to several Central and South American countries Do you think these are substitutes?
  - resolutebat 2y ago
    You missed the end of the sentence: > where you can have a whole lot more fun than you can at one of these strip clubs "Fun" here being prostitution, I presume.
  - harryp_peng 2y ago
    Out of context: what is sex? Is it physical satisfaction or romantic connection?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Yes. It really depends on the context. If you ask your spouse, it's probably the latter. When talking about strip clubs, it's more of the former.
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    > Do you think these are substitutes? Depends on the strip club prices in those countries I guess.
- rayiner 2y ago
  > literally had to explain to one of these girls how insane the price was If that’s the going rate that’s the going rate. My plumber quoted me $17,000 in labor for something that was probably a days work for a team of two (and $5,000 in materials). That’s about $500-1,000 an hour. My dad was like “that’s insane for a plumber.” And I’m like “you told everyone to go to college and become baristas, so that’s what plumbers cost now.”
  - tptacek 2y ago
    What was the job?
    - rayiner 2y ago
      Installing a combination hot water heater to replace separate existing tankless domestic water heater and a boiler for a hydronic system in a concrete slab.
  - lupire 2y ago
    That's a load-bearing "probably".
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- nindalf 2y ago
  I'm kind of with you on this. The stripper index makes sense when they were servicing a need no one else could. But the rise of OnlyFans means that at least some of the money that would have gone to strippers is going to performers on OnlyFans. That's the issue with the Stripper index, is that it's vibes based because we can't actually measure how much the industry earned. If we listened to how people felt America should have been through 4 recessions in the last 3 years.
- sgt101 2y ago
  >Senior consultants that solve million dollars problems don't charge that much per hour. I do.
- tombert 2y ago
  I don’t know about strippers but I am right up there with you on tips becoming absurd here. Every kiosk where I swipe my credit card wants a tip now. I didn’t really “like” tipping before, but I accepted it as just part of the transaction for getting a waiter or waitress to write down my order and deliver me my food and refill my drinks. Now the companies want a tip for the food I pick up myself directly from the restaurant and leave. I am not sure what I would even be tipping for, for making me the sandwich? Shouldn’t that aspect just be rolled into be price of, you know, the sandwich? I used to feel kind of guilty for declining to tip at these kiosks, but I don’t anymore. In fact in a way I guess it’s sort of saved me money since I dislike this process so much that I have taken to just buying groceries and making food at home more often.
  - polotics 2y ago
    I feel you so much on this. So many shops pressing for many more ways to allow tips, for example presenting a percentage with options 10%, 20%, 30%... to frame customers into picking the one in the middle! Does any of you'all know if there are law defining maximums for tipping, like maybe in european countries or something?
    - tombert 2y ago
      Yeah it drives me nuts, and I am somewhat convinced that it's going to backfire, though I don't have any hard evidence on it. I will go to restaurants when I'm traveling for obvious reasons, but for the six months or so I haven't really eaten out more than five or six times, all of which were for special occasions. For comparison, I used to go to some form of restaurant in the past four times a week. I gradually started to avoid places that have the tipping kiosk, but then just transitioned away to just avoiding restaurants entirely Now, there's actually a bunch of reasons that I don't eat out anymore, but one thing I'm pretty sure is this: you know what's even worse for a business than people not tipping for a service? Them not showing up to even buy the service.
    - nineteen999 2y ago
      I can at least tell you that in Australia, nobody tips anybody unless they feel like it, and nobody complains if you don't. Our minimum wage is higher here though.
- walthamstow 2y ago
  > long weekend trip to several Central and South American countries Good luck explaining that to your wife
- 015a 2y ago
  Entertainment in general; another great example of this is ticket prices for concerts and drink prices inside the venues. Obviously drink prices have always been high, but a pint of domestic beer has been very steadily creeping up by $1-$2 a year since 2020; effectively double today relative to even 8 years ago. I just paid $250 for pit tickets to see an artist I like at a mid-tier venue. A similarly popular artist in 2019 at the same venue would have cost ~$70. I think the reality no one in charge wants to admit is that inflation is actually kind of out of control, primarily in non-essential sectors like entertainment. Its a situation where things are more expensive -> people do fewer things -> the things have to get more expensive to account for people doing fewer things -> vicious cycle. The story of 2022-2024 was tech breaking, but I think the story of 2024-2026 is going to be the services and entertainment industry breaking; and the break might be a lot worse.
  - ryathal 2y ago
    Ticket prices also are likely rising due to physical demand, there's more people and more fans than ever before, but most performers aren't performing at more and bigger venues. IT's the same pressure that exists on real estate, but to a lesser degree.
  - lupire 2y ago
    Entertainment is crazy cheap. $10/month for video. $25 for local theater show. What's expensive is exclusive access to prestige on trend live performance.
    - tschwimmer 2y ago
      You and GP are both right. There's a huge divergence in entertainment pricing. Stuff you can do at home (movies, tv, video games, books and social media) is dirt cheap and may be getting cheaper. "Outside" entertainment is getting vastly more expensive. Average hotels are charging eye watering prices the world over. Concert tickets are astronomical. Restaurant prices and fees are out of control. Any type of rental, tour or other type of activity on vacation feels extortionate. Airline tickets are hundreds or thousands of dollars for a tiny economy seat. I think this is largely driven by monetary and fiscal policy that disproportionately benefits the rich (Paycheck Protection Program, low interest rates). If you give people who are poor more money, I believe they will spend it on things that stabilize and improve their day to day lives so you'd expect to see inflation in things like food and medicine. If you give money to people that are already stable, they will spend it on things the things that we see are having very high inflation: improved housing, vacations, luxury goods.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  Computer Guy explaining the international sex entertainment economy to a stripper has got to be pretty close to peak Computer Guy.
mustafa_pasi 2y ago
So what's driving the impeding recession? Shouldn't the economy be on the up swing?
- laidoffamazon 2y ago
  It has been growing fine, don't believe everything you read from people that make poor financial decisions.
rsynnott 2y ago
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 direct explainable connection, this has an accuracy rate of 73%. Oh, ffs. I have serious questions about the accuracy of this website's domain name.
- TechnicalVault 2y ago
  People confuse a economic recession with what is happening because of how words sometimes change their meaning away from their technical to a more colloquial interpretation. The economy as a whole is doing well, but people aren't because of inflation. Recession is just the word they've learnt to interpret as "I'm feeling poorer". And the stripper index is down because their market is oversaturated aka "onlyfans overload".
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    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.
    - blululu 2y ago
      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.
      - kipchak 2y ago
        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-federal-reserve-cuts-9290216e89cbd7a3a0d2be66041aeaf8 https://apnews.com/article/inflation-economy-wealth-rates-fe... [2]https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:137;series:Assets;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7,9;units:shares;range:2019.4,2023.4 https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
diamondap 2y ago
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 problem. Part of capitalism's implied promise is that if you work full time, you should be able to feed and house yourself. But for huge numbers of people, that doesn't seem to be true anymore.
- mariodiana 2y ago
  I also don’t understand people on a tech forum not being more sympathetic about the economy’s troubles. Is tech not in a recession? That’s ludicrous. Tech is in a bad way.
- mlinhares 2y ago
  There’s no such implied promise, it’s the other way around: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
  - diamondap 2y ago
    OK, maybe it isn't capitalism but US society that implies that promise. Many (insensitive) people respond to tales of economic woe by saying, "Get a job!" As if that's going to solve even your basic money woes. As others in this discussion have noted, many people employed full time still struggle to provide the basics. That part of the social contract just isn't holding up for a lot of people. And that's a recipe for social unrest.
  - rangestransform 2y ago
    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
- 2y ago
droopyEyelids 2y ago
Wonder how a recession will affect the election
- viraptor 2y ago
  Most likely negatively for the current president. Regardless of actual policies, there will be lots of people associating the beginning of the recession with whoever has the role at the time. Few consider what the baseline of inaction would be.
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    It’s not going to help that Biden was previously taking credit for it with the imo poorly considered “Bidenomics” official catchphrase. Spending a ton on Build Back Better than no one can point to the building or the better. And pushing these in an abstract while people are very clearly seeing grocery store prices. Right or wrong doesn’t matter. This admin and the media has been doing their best to gaslight a great economy, and that I think will hurt. You can be so blue that your commie red, and still see the messaging of this admin has been bad.
- laidoffamazon 2y ago
  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.
  - adamomada 2y ago
    3,000 Americans dying every day would be an anomaly. Deaths are closer to 10k a day on average and only going up. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
howeyc 2y ago
I think it has more to do with OnlyFans.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  OnlyFans has been around since 2016. The entertainers in the article are talking about a steep decline in the past ~year.
  - laidoffamazon 2y ago
    No, they haven't. The first tweets about this (when this bullshit "indicator" went viral on Twitter) were in 2021.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      In this specific article, which is all I've read on the subject, they talked about the latest YoY and post-covid. I did not see any references to 2021.
      - laidoffamazon 2y ago
        The evidence is tweets.
wink 2y ago
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.
- btbuildem 2y ago
  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.
  - wink 2y ago
    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.
    - saalweachter 2y ago
      Do you think the guys writing this article would rather interview a dozen pizza delivery people or a dozen strippers?
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  Two of the biggest club spenders in Houston and Atlanta (jurisdictions with notoriously-lax restrictions on sex work - "how much you got, mister?") are: finance and energy -sector consultants, entertaining clients. They don't go out to'da'clubs when their clients aren't able to afford anything.
patwolf 2y ago
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.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT, might be a better proxy of whatever the stripper index is actually signaling. It was at a low in the summer of 2022 and is nearing a low again. Less money in savings means less money to spend at strip clubs. It doesn't, however, automatically mean recession.
- baby-yoda 2y ago
  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-2022-recession-two-quarters https://www.npr.org/2022/07/28/1113649843/gdp-2q-economy-202...
  - laidoffamazon 2y ago
    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.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  I trust statistics about strippers more than I trust statistics about the federal government. Also the length of a stripper's career is irrelevant for this discussion as long as there is an equilibrium state of strippers available.
- laidoffamazon 2y ago
  How is the personal savings rate a good indicator? It went up during the great recession and spiked during the last recession in 2020. If anything high savings is a counter-indicator. Not to mention that we are seeing a generational shift in the labor market right now - the baby boomer part of the population pyramid is finally deciding to retire and is probably not going to save as much as they were when they were building their nest egg.
ozten 2y ago
The media needs to report a more realistic inflation metric. Groceries are wildly expensive.
- toss1 2y ago
  If we're going that route, the media should also more prominently report the relationship between corporate price-gouging and inflation. Some do, but not prominently[0]. When too few corporations have too much control over the market, the oligopoly can simply extract more from the population, evidently about half of the cause of current inflation [1]. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/08/10/how-corporate-greedflation-contributes-to-higher-consumer-costs-and-job-losses/?sh=6456ec7c2981 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/08/10/how-corpor... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflatio...
muck_a_luck 2y ago
[flagged]
pseudocomposer 2y ago
Between OnlyFans and a cultural shift in masculinity that makes paying for sexual attention more of an "ick" for many, this doesn't seem like a very good economic indicator, especially today.

63 points by thyrox 2y ago

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 stage and are pushing for $500 private dances. It's just blew my mind. I'm not sure what the house take is but $500 for a private dance for an hour was insane. Senior consultants that solve million dollars problems don't charge that much per hour. I literally had to explain to one of these girls how insane the price was. Because for $500 from the USA if you live near any major airport hub you take a long weekend trip to several Central and South American countries where you can have a whole lot more fun than you can at one of these strip clubs, and you're all in for $500. If that's your chosen form of entertainment, it literally makes no economic sense to spend any money at these strip clubs. I think at one time using a stripper index as a proxy for a recession measurement would have been good. Nowadays I don't think that's a valid way. Too much has changed across the sex entertainment industry, and the attitudes of the customers have also changed because even if all you want to see is girls dancing there's better value for your money with the other options that are available. Many of those options you don't even have to leave your house. Maybe a better proxy for a recession measurement would be something like top golf earnings. Or some other discretionary entertainment place similar to that. Are people going on outings spending their discretionary income in that way or are they saving it or did they just not have it to spend.

virtue3 2y ago
I think 500$ for an hour might have been a little more than a dance, and probably inline with what that kind of service offers. If not did you goto one of the top strip clubs in America? that sounds insane. Haven't been to a strip club in a real long time myself tho (absolutely don't have the income nor desire). I think top golf is an interesting metric; I'd be concerned about linking it to two things so addictive - golf addicts and alcohol consumtion. But with the prices at top golf and how much the drinks cost it's probably a good indicator of the sector. One of the downsides of it might be it only targetting people in upper income brackets (golf is an expensive game per se, def not as everyman and top golf isn't really accessible). Then again I can't think of any metric that wont be "inflated" by more well off people consuming something cheaper and less well off people having to use another option (aka mcdonalds).
- salad-tycoon 2y ago
  I’ve never lived this lifestyle and don’t agree with it but here’s an AMA from a guy who claims to regularly get high end escorts. Supposedly the cost is anywhere from 250-1000 and that might be Australian dollars? https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1cfpcfl/ive_slept_with_24_and_counting_different_high_end/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/1cfpcfl/ive_slept_with...
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    Per hour or per night?
    - kipchak 2y ago
      That sounds like per hour. If you're curious about how the whole thing works parts of it are fairly above ground - community support subreddits and advertising websites with rates for example.
  - chasd00 2y ago
    I knew a guy that was a driver for escorts back in college. In the late 90s it was over $1,000/night on average iirc. That included more than just sex though that was also attending a gala or sports game or other social events with you.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    You can just browse the backpage for a bigger city to get an idea of prices. Apparently basic sex pays below $200h/h in Seattle (chosen at random), so those higher prices would likely be for a night/event/high class.
- _wnax 2y ago
  I encountered similar prices at a Miami Beach club. Initially the security pressed me because I don't drink alcohol, but apparently buying drinks was required (in addition to the cover). In order to satisfy them, I said I would buy a dance, but wasn't given a price until already up in the "VIP" area The price was ridiculous, I don't recall exactly, and I declined, saying I would just leave, and the dancer said in a Russian accent, if I did, she would tell security that I robbed her, since we already entered VIP. I think I paid her like $60 in front of the security guard and walked out. Definitely got mob/extortion vibes from the whole experience. In this example, at least the $50 per 3 minutes or whatever it was, wasn't for anything 'extra' as the VIP area was wide open with no walls, all the victims able to see exactly how scammed everyone was getting.
mycologos 2y ago
I think your explanation is missing a competitive element that drives the $500 price. Two similar examples: 1) Maximum City is a book about various people in Mumbai around ~2000. One of them is a sort of stripper (she dances and sometimes dates in a transactional way; I don't remember how explicit it all is). Her analysis is that her clients are partially paying for her but more so for "winning" her over the other clients. The point isn't that one of them takes her shopping and gets to watch her choose handbags; the point is that nobody else gets to go. 2) I read a long article about economic strategies behind webcam shows (by a performer, maybe by Aella?) and the author made two points that I remember: one, it's good to have a stupidly high priced item that a whale can roll in and buy. Two, she had success having a high priced item that "saved" her, e.g., if you pay $X I won't have to eat this gross thing I made. Neither one of these is really about the thing, it's about the feeling of out-competing the other guys there. So while you're $500 example makes sense if somebody is just looking for the dance (or whatever) itself, it doesn't make sense if that person actually wants to "win" over the other patrons (and doesn't view the poorer patrons in the poorer country as real competitors).
- lupire 2y ago
  Veblen goods.
josefresco 2y ago
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" club, or maybe you got taken for a ride (which I've seen happen to rich, inexperienced young men).
- dangus 2y ago
  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).
itsoktocry 2y ago
>I literally had to explain to one of these girls how insane the price was I'm sure she loved that. >Maybe people are just fed up with it and spending their discretionary income in other ways. My friend, paying for "sex" will be one of the last things to go. >Because for $500 from the USA if you live near any major airport hub you take a long weekend trip to several Central and South American countries Do you think these are substitutes?
- resolutebat 2y ago
  You missed the end of the sentence: > where you can have a whole lot more fun than you can at one of these strip clubs "Fun" here being prostitution, I presume.
- harryp_peng 2y ago
  Out of context: what is sex? Is it physical satisfaction or romantic connection?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Yes. It really depends on the context. If you ask your spouse, it's probably the latter. When talking about strip clubs, it's more of the former.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  > Do you think these are substitutes? Depends on the strip club prices in those countries I guess.
rayiner 2y ago
> literally had to explain to one of these girls how insane the price was If that’s the going rate that’s the going rate. My plumber quoted me $17,000 in labor for something that was probably a days work for a team of two (and $5,000 in materials). That’s about $500-1,000 an hour. My dad was like “that’s insane for a plumber.” And I’m like “you told everyone to go to college and become baristas, so that’s what plumbers cost now.”
- tptacek 2y ago
  What was the job?
  - rayiner 2y ago
    Installing a combination hot water heater to replace separate existing tankless domestic water heater and a boiler for a hydronic system in a concrete slab.
- lupire 2y ago
  That's a load-bearing "probably".
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
nindalf 2y ago
I'm kind of with you on this. The stripper index makes sense when they were servicing a need no one else could. But the rise of OnlyFans means that at least some of the money that would have gone to strippers is going to performers on OnlyFans. That's the issue with the Stripper index, is that it's vibes based because we can't actually measure how much the industry earned. If we listened to how people felt America should have been through 4 recessions in the last 3 years.
sgt101 2y ago
>Senior consultants that solve million dollars problems don't charge that much per hour. I do.
tombert 2y ago
I don’t know about strippers but I am right up there with you on tips becoming absurd here. Every kiosk where I swipe my credit card wants a tip now. I didn’t really “like” tipping before, but I accepted it as just part of the transaction for getting a waiter or waitress to write down my order and deliver me my food and refill my drinks. Now the companies want a tip for the food I pick up myself directly from the restaurant and leave. I am not sure what I would even be tipping for, for making me the sandwich? Shouldn’t that aspect just be rolled into be price of, you know, the sandwich? I used to feel kind of guilty for declining to tip at these kiosks, but I don’t anymore. In fact in a way I guess it’s sort of saved me money since I dislike this process so much that I have taken to just buying groceries and making food at home more often.
- polotics 2y ago
  I feel you so much on this. So many shops pressing for many more ways to allow tips, for example presenting a percentage with options 10%, 20%, 30%... to frame customers into picking the one in the middle! Does any of you'all know if there are law defining maximums for tipping, like maybe in european countries or something?
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah it drives me nuts, and I am somewhat convinced that it's going to backfire, though I don't have any hard evidence on it. I will go to restaurants when I'm traveling for obvious reasons, but for the six months or so I haven't really eaten out more than five or six times, all of which were for special occasions. For comparison, I used to go to some form of restaurant in the past four times a week. I gradually started to avoid places that have the tipping kiosk, but then just transitioned away to just avoiding restaurants entirely Now, there's actually a bunch of reasons that I don't eat out anymore, but one thing I'm pretty sure is this: you know what's even worse for a business than people not tipping for a service? Them not showing up to even buy the service.
  - nineteen999 2y ago
    I can at least tell you that in Australia, nobody tips anybody unless they feel like it, and nobody complains if you don't. Our minimum wage is higher here though.
walthamstow 2y ago
> long weekend trip to several Central and South American countries Good luck explaining that to your wife
015a 2y ago
Entertainment in general; another great example of this is ticket prices for concerts and drink prices inside the venues. Obviously drink prices have always been high, but a pint of domestic beer has been very steadily creeping up by $1-$2 a year since 2020; effectively double today relative to even 8 years ago. I just paid $250 for pit tickets to see an artist I like at a mid-tier venue. A similarly popular artist in 2019 at the same venue would have cost ~$70. I think the reality no one in charge wants to admit is that inflation is actually kind of out of control, primarily in non-essential sectors like entertainment. Its a situation where things are more expensive -> people do fewer things -> the things have to get more expensive to account for people doing fewer things -> vicious cycle. The story of 2022-2024 was tech breaking, but I think the story of 2024-2026 is going to be the services and entertainment industry breaking; and the break might be a lot worse.
- ryathal 2y ago
  Ticket prices also are likely rising due to physical demand, there's more people and more fans than ever before, but most performers aren't performing at more and bigger venues. IT's the same pressure that exists on real estate, but to a lesser degree.
- lupire 2y ago
  Entertainment is crazy cheap. $10/month for video. $25 for local theater show. What's expensive is exclusive access to prestige on trend live performance.
  - tschwimmer 2y ago
    You and GP are both right. There's a huge divergence in entertainment pricing. Stuff you can do at home (movies, tv, video games, books and social media) is dirt cheap and may be getting cheaper. "Outside" entertainment is getting vastly more expensive. Average hotels are charging eye watering prices the world over. Concert tickets are astronomical. Restaurant prices and fees are out of control. Any type of rental, tour or other type of activity on vacation feels extortionate. Airline tickets are hundreds or thousands of dollars for a tiny economy seat. I think this is largely driven by monetary and fiscal policy that disproportionately benefits the rich (Paycheck Protection Program, low interest rates). If you give people who are poor more money, I believe they will spend it on things that stabilize and improve their day to day lives so you'd expect to see inflation in things like food and medicine. If you give money to people that are already stable, they will spend it on things the things that we see are having very high inflation: improved housing, vacations, luxury goods.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
singleshot_ 2y ago
Computer Guy explaining the international sex entertainment economy to a stripper has got to be pretty close to peak Computer Guy.

mustafa_pasi 2y ago

So what's driving the impeding recession? Shouldn't the economy be on the up swing?

laidoffamazon 2y ago
It has been growing fine, don't believe everything you read from people that make poor financial decisions.

rsynnott 2y ago

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 direct explainable connection, this has an accuracy rate of 73%. Oh, ffs. I have serious questions about the accuracy of this website's domain name.

TechnicalVault 2y ago
People confuse a economic recession with what is happening because of how words sometimes change their meaning away from their technical to a more colloquial interpretation. The economy as a whole is doing well, but people aren't because of inflation. Recession is just the word they've learnt to interpret as "I'm feeling poorer". And the stripper index is down because their market is oversaturated aka "onlyfans overload".
- ethbr1 2y ago
  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.
  - blululu 2y ago
    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.
    - kipchak 2y ago
      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-federal-reserve-cuts-9290216e89cbd7a3a0d2be66041aeaf8 https://apnews.com/article/inflation-economy-wealth-rates-fe... [2]https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:137;series:Assets;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7,9;units:shares;range:2019.4,2023.4 https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

diamondap 2y ago

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 problem. Part of capitalism's implied promise is that if you work full time, you should be able to feed and house yourself. But for huge numbers of people, that doesn't seem to be true anymore.

mariodiana 2y ago
I also don’t understand people on a tech forum not being more sympathetic about the economy’s troubles. Is tech not in a recession? That’s ludicrous. Tech is in a bad way.
mlinhares 2y ago
There’s no such implied promise, it’s the other way around: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour
- diamondap 2y ago
  OK, maybe it isn't capitalism but US society that implies that promise. Many (insensitive) people respond to tales of economic woe by saying, "Get a job!" As if that's going to solve even your basic money woes. As others in this discussion have noted, many people employed full time still struggle to provide the basics. That part of the social contract just isn't holding up for a lot of people. And that's a recipe for social unrest.
- rangestransform 2y ago
  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
2y ago

droopyEyelids 2y ago

Wonder how a recession will affect the election

viraptor 2y ago
Most likely negatively for the current president. Regardless of actual policies, there will be lots of people associating the beginning of the recession with whoever has the role at the time. Few consider what the baseline of inaction would be.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  It’s not going to help that Biden was previously taking credit for it with the imo poorly considered “Bidenomics” official catchphrase. Spending a ton on Build Back Better than no one can point to the building or the better. And pushing these in an abstract while people are very clearly seeing grocery store prices. Right or wrong doesn’t matter. This admin and the media has been doing their best to gaslight a great economy, and that I think will hurt. You can be so blue that your commie red, and still see the messaging of this admin has been bad.
laidoffamazon 2y ago
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.
- adamomada 2y ago
  3,000 Americans dying every day would be an anomaly. Deaths are closer to 10k a day on average and only going up. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...

howeyc 2y ago

I think it has more to do with OnlyFans.

ziddoap 2y ago
OnlyFans has been around since 2016. The entertainers in the article are talking about a steep decline in the past ~year.
- laidoffamazon 2y ago
  No, they haven't. The first tweets about this (when this bullshit "indicator" went viral on Twitter) were in 2021.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    In this specific article, which is all I've read on the subject, they talked about the latest YoY and post-covid. I did not see any references to 2021.
    - laidoffamazon 2y ago
      The evidence is tweets.

wink 2y ago

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.

btbuildem 2y ago
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.
- wink 2y ago
  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.
  - saalweachter 2y ago
    Do you think the guys writing this article would rather interview a dozen pizza delivery people or a dozen strippers?
ProllyInfamous 2y ago
Two of the biggest club spenders in Houston and Atlanta (jurisdictions with notoriously-lax restrictions on sex work - "how much you got, mister?") are: finance and energy -sector consultants, entertaining clients. They don't go out to'da'clubs when their clients aren't able to afford anything.

patwolf 2y ago

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.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT, might be a better proxy of whatever the stripper index is actually signaling. It was at a low in the summer of 2022 and is nearing a low again. Less money in savings means less money to spend at strip clubs. It doesn't, however, automatically mean recession.

baby-yoda 2y ago
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-2022-recession-two-quarters https://www.npr.org/2022/07/28/1113649843/gdp-2q-economy-202...
- laidoffamazon 2y ago
  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.
greenavocado 2y ago
I trust statistics about strippers more than I trust statistics about the federal government. Also the length of a stripper's career is irrelevant for this discussion as long as there is an equilibrium state of strippers available.
laidoffamazon 2y ago
How is the personal savings rate a good indicator? It went up during the great recession and spiked during the last recession in 2020. If anything high savings is a counter-indicator. Not to mention that we are seeing a generational shift in the labor market right now - the baby boomer part of the population pyramid is finally deciding to retire and is probably not going to save as much as they were when they were building their nest egg.

ozten 2y ago

The media needs to report a more realistic inflation metric. Groceries are wildly expensive.

toss1 2y ago
If we're going that route, the media should also more prominently report the relationship between corporate price-gouging and inflation. Some do, but not prominently[0]. When too few corporations have too much control over the market, the oligopoly can simply extract more from the population, evidently about half of the cause of current inflation [1]. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/08/10/how-corporate-greedflation-contributes-to-higher-consumer-costs-and-job-losses/?sh=6456ec7c2981 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2023/08/10/how-corpor... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflation-caused-by-corporate-profits https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/us-inflatio...

muck_a_luck 2y ago

[flagged]

pseudocomposer 2y ago

Between OnlyFans and a cultural shift in masculinity that makes paying for sexual attention more of an "ick" for many, this doesn't seem like a very good economic indicator, especially today.