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Comment by ClassyJacket | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. A bunch of my friends are sex workers. They make literally ten times as much money as me per hour and love their jobs.

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Says more about how little tech workers are paid in Australia, than anything else. Work for Google in US and earn more than a hooker!

> Work for Google in US and earn more than a hooker!

What a marketing claim

...and then spend 90% of it on rent ;). Costs of life matter.

Australia ain't cheap.

Have to account for stability of the job as well. How many people can work in sex markets in their 40s.

Sex work & the Valley, over 40? No job for you!

Hookers can probably avoid to pay much income tax, due to being paid in cash most of the time.

In countries like Poland prostitution is actually tax-free, because if government took any money from a prostitute it would act like a pimp, which is illegal.

Once upon a time it was the best excuse for those who had undisclosed income sources (other than prostitution). Recently tax offices started demanding proofs, like names of the clients.

Always fun to hear about these cat and mouse games of government vs. people who want to avoid taxes :)

> Recently tax offices started demanding proofs, like names of the clients.

Huh? That makes no sense. Why would naming a client proove anything? And why would sex workers know names of their clients?

I think it is more about getting the client's testimony confirming the deed. And you're right, prostitution is a business based on discretion, so most of the time prostitute would not know the name of her client. Bottom line is: they stopped taking a word for it and started demanding proofs.

Have you ever wondered why you have to provide receipts for reimbursement, despite the fact that the vast majority of people here could put together a forged receipt quite easily?

It's not because the receipt proves anything. It's because if there was ever any question, it gives a validator something to actually validate, to call up the putative place of business and confirm the transaction and the size.

It's one of those deals where the mere threat of being able to validate tends to keep the system humming along fairly well, even to the point that many of the participants have forgotten the justification for the system. Presumably there's someone out there routinely forging receipts for fun and profit but it must not be that big a fraud considered across the entire system.

Same thing here.

That "John Smith" really makes the rounds, doesn't he?

Why not take the money and hard redirect them to charity?

This is very much not true. In the US, prostitutes are very punctilious about paying their tax bills, because the having a discrepancy between declared income and visible consumption is a quick way to land yourself on an auditor's desk. Remember, they got Al Capone for income tax evasion.

The IRS is very open about this. A fellow HN commenter pointed me to this document [1], on which you should search for "Bribes" and "Stolen Property". Even if you don't want to trust to the IRS's confidentiality rules (for example, it won't share your tax return with law enforcement without a court order), it's still common practice to come up with another description for your income in order to pay tax on it.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html#en_US_2016_pu...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_illegal_income_in_...

Not sure where in America is paying $300 per hour for software developers.

in the valley as an "rockstar" iOS developer.

With $299.95 per hour in rent.

I doubt they have 8 hour a day booked though :)

The number of hours you can practically work is an important factor, as are the risks (illness of various forms, exposure to dangerous customers, ...) that at best further reduce your earning potential for a while or at worse lead to complete curtailment and/or much pain (or even early death).

Simply comparing the hourly pay rate is pretty meaningless when comparing job options like these that differ so massively in other factors.

I'll keep my tech job if it is all the same to you.

(not that I imagine many being willing to pay a good rate for an hour with my physical form, so the choice might not really be mine!)

I can sit and code for 10 hours at a time without my genitals aching.

$600,000/yr isn't that outlandish. You just need 30+ reports or do really good IC work

>Work for Google

You do not work for Google though, you live for Google - work just happens to be the majority of your life.

You don't live for prostitution, it pays the bills like any other non-life-consuming job.

Are you differentiating Google from other employers here, or making a more general comment on 9-5 style careers?

I've always been curious where you take your career when you get too old or don't want to do it anymore. There'd be sudden drop off in income level, which applies pressure to any who don't plan well in advance. Makes me think of professional athletes who end up broke because they didn't plan properly and no longer have the body to perform.

I know some older people in the tech sector who can't find jobs for the same reason. It's not just athletes and sex workers. :)

Per hour probably isn't a good comparison. Developer per-hour is usually for a medium-large company that wants you for full-time hours and takes care of all risk and overhead for you. Sex worker per-hour is for a client who only wants a hour or whatever, and the worker takes basically all of the risk and overhead as far as rent/hotel rate, travel, supplies, advertising, etc.

Maybe a little more similar to a software consultant who has to spend a ton of extra time drumming up clients and setting up engagements and pays for their travel and any hotel fees out of their rate.

But do they work as many hours as you do?

(the answer is probably "they don't need to")

How much money do you make per hour?

Their pay would go down quite a bit if they were no longer part of a black-market economy.

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