04 June 2007

Why prostitutes earn more than architects…

“… when there are a lot of people willing and able to do a job, that job generally doesn’t pay well. This is one of four meaningful factors that determine a wage. The others are the specialized skills a job requires, the unpleasantness of a job, and the demand for services that the job fulfills.

The delicate balance between these factors helps explain why, for instance, the typical prostitute earns more than the typical architect. It may not seem as though she should. The architect would appear to be more skilled (as the word is usually defined) and better educated (again, as usually defined). But little girls don’t grow up dreaming of becoming prostitutes, so the supply of potential prostitutes is relatively small. Their skills, while not necessarily “specialized”, are practiced in a very specialized context. The job is unpleasant and forbidding in at least two significant ways: the likelihood of violence and the lost opportunity of having a stable family life. As for demand? Let’s just say that an architect is more likely to hire a prostitute than vice versa."

5 comments

  1. Anonymous8:10 AM

    well, the sense of satisfaction that an architect experiences looking back at a job that really achieved a goal and took a lot of stress, work, anxiety and effort is not something that a whore feels after she... well, you know...

    architecture requires planning, proyection, perspective. none of those are strong items in prostitutes... are they?

    when it comes to work, one has to strive to find some sort of sense of purporse in what one does... its nice to get to certain age, get back and say, well, i did something useful.

    no matter how much someone enjoys prostitution practice (which by the way is rare), i doubt someone can say that made someone else's life better once they had their orgasm.

    an architect has a bit more longevity on their achievements. that is a different flavor of payment, that definetly pays more than the other one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. lamentablemente, en un analisis estatico de oferta y demanda, esto tiene razon...pero ese enfoque es muy simple; por lo que no diria que es evidencia contundente que esto es cierto. no te preocupes...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ufff... gracias por tu comentario Andrés. *Yanis guarda el látigo y las esposas*. Bien... ¿de qué estabamos hablando?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sí, yo sé, el anónimo tiene razón... (suspiro)
    Este es un extracto del libro "Freakonomics", y me pareció tan genial la casualidad que tuviera este párrafo. Por cierto, todos deben leerlo, pero en especial Andrés: está increíble!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete