When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants (23 page)

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Of course we’ve blogged about sex but, weirdly, only other people’s sex: not one of our eight thousand blog posts ever mentions our own sexual experiences. That said, we have had a few things to say about prostitution, STDs, and online dating.

A few years ago, Germany legalized prostitution. It wasn’t hard to surmise that this was meant to make Germany a bit more hospitable for World Cup fans. Brothels across the country staffed up and prepared for the World Cup boom—which,
apparently,
hasn’t happened at all
. It may well be that enough soccer fans already feel they’re being screwed by the refs to bother going out at night and paying for it.

Whereby:

        
• It has been observed that Democrats are generally in favor of taxation and Republicans are generally opposed to unnecessary sexual activity; and whereby:

        
• The unintended costs of sexual activity are unacceptably high, particularly in the political arena (c.f. Messrs. Clinton, Foley, Craig, and Edwards, to name just a fraction of the available examples); and whereby:

        
• The pursuit of sex is also extremely costly beyond the political realm, in terms of lost productivity, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and ruined marriages (and other committed relationships); and whereby:

        
• The federal government is now, as always, in need of more money;

It is hereby proposed that a new “sex tax” shall be levied upon the citizens of these United States.

Let it be clear that the aim of said tax is not to deter sexual activity itself, but rather to capture some of the costs imposed by certain extraneous sexual activity that, especially once made public, tends to divert precious resources from more worthy subjects; to this end:

        
• Married couples will receive a substantial credit for sanctioned, in-home sexual activity; and, conversely:

        
• The highest rates shall be paid for premarital, extramarital, and otherwise unusual or undesirable sexual activity; and:

        
• Sexual activity between members of the same gender; or activity between more than two participants; or in an airplane, on a beach, or in other “nontraditional” settings shall surely be taxed at a higher, though heretofore undetermined, rate.

Also to be determined is a scale for noncoital activity. The Internal Revenue Service shall be granted the full and complete authority to collect said tax. Furthermore:

        
• Payment of said tax, while voluntary, is no more voluntary than payments or credits on other tax-related activities such as: charitable contributions, business-related deductions, and cash received for goods and services, and is therefore expected to stimulate a very acceptable rate of compliance; additionally:

        
• Taxpayers will create a sexual paper trail that could prove advantageous in countless future scenarios, including but not limited to: employment, courtship, and participation in the political process; and:

        
• The typical IRS audit would become considerably more interesting for the auditor, and interesting work is a much-needed incentive to attract and retain qualified IRS employees.

It should be acknowledged that determining an acceptable name for said tax may be politically difficult, much like the “estate tax” and the “death tax” are in fact nomenclaturally diverse versions of the same tax used by opposing parties; candidates to consider include: the Family Creation Tax; the Extracurricular Intercourse and Lesser Sex Act Tax; and the
Shtup
Tax.

Furthermore:

        
• This is not the first time such a tax has been proposed in America; in 1971, a Democratic legislator from Providence, RI, named Bernard Gladstone
proposed such a measure
in his state; he called it “
the one tax that would probably be overpaid
,” but sadly, the measure was promptly rejected as being in “bad taste,” a position with which we summarily disagree; and whereby:

        
• A similar tax does have a historical (if fictional) precedence in the writings of one Jonathan Swift, who in
Gulliver’s Travels
noted that in a place called Laputa, “The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favourites of the other sex, and the assessments according to the number and natures of the favors they have received; for which they are allowed to be their own vouchers.” And finally:

        
• It is unclear why both Swift and Gladstone proposed that the tax be levied solely upon males but, in light of recent and less-than-recent news events, they were probably 100 percent correct to have done so.

Steven Landsburg is not known for having temperate opinions. An economics professor at the University of Rochester and a prolific writer, Landsburg regularly raises provocative theories:
women choke under pressure
, e.g., or
miserliness is a form of generosity
. He is the author of the books
The Armchair Economist
and
Fair Play,
which are in some ways direct forebears of
Freakonomics.
His latest is called
More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics.
We asked him about the titular idea:

        
Q
. Many of the stories in your book rest on the idea that people should alter their personal welfare for the greater good—for instance, STD-free men should
become more sexually active to give healthy women disease-free partners. In our society, is it possible to put such ideas into practice?

        
A
. Sure. We put such ideas into practice all the time. We think that the owners of polluting factories should give up some of their personal welfare (i.e., their profits) for the greater good, and we convince them to do that via tradable emissions permits (when we’re being smart) or via clumsy regulations (when we’re being dumb). We think that professional thieves should give up some aspects of their personal welfare (i.e., their thievery) for the greater good, and we convince them to do that with the prospect of prison terms.

                
Our personal welfare is almost always in conflict with the greater good. When something exciting happens at the ballpark, everyone stands up to see better, and therefore nobody succeeds. At parties, everyone speaks loudly to be heard over everyone else, and therefore everyone goes home with a sore throat. The one great exception is the interaction among buyers and sellers in a competitive marketplace, where—for fairly subtle reasons—the price system aligns private and public interests perfectly. That’s a miraculous exception, but it is an exception. In most other areas, there’s room to improve people’s incentives.

                
One theme of
More Sex Is Safer Sex
is that some of those disconnects between private and public interests
are surprising and counterintuitive. Casual sex is one of those examples. If you are a recklessly promiscuous person with a high probability of HIV infection, you pollute the partner pool every time you jump into it—and you should be discouraged, just as any polluter should be discouraged. But the flip side of that is that if you are a very cautious person with a low probability of infection—and a low propensity to pass on any infection that you do have—then you improve the quality of the partner pool every time you jump into it. That’s the opposite of pollution, and it should be encouraged for exactly the same reasons that pollution should be discouraged.

In
SuperFreakonomics,
we profiled a high-end escort whose entrepreneurial skills and understanding of economics made her a financial success. We call her Allie, which is neither her real nor professional name. There was so much interest in Allie after the book came out that she agreed to field reader questions on the blog. They are paraphrased below, along with Allie’s answers.

        
Q
. Can you tell us how you became an escort, and what your family thinks—or knows—about your occupation?

        
A
. My parents don’t know about my work, or anything else about my sex life. I was a programmer when I decided to quit my job and become an escort. I was single and meeting people through a popular dating website. Finding someone “special” proved to be difficult, but I did meet many nice men. I had grown up in a repressive small town and I was, at that time, looking to understand my own sexuality. I have never attached my self-worth to some idea of virginity or monogamy, but I still had not really explored many of my desires. I was meeting people living alternative lifestyles, and, as I got to know them, the stereotypes that I had built up started to come apart. During this time I was in my mid-twenties, and I had an active sex life. One day I decided to enter the occupation of “escort” on an online instant messaging profile. Within seconds I had many responses, and after about a week of talking to a few people, I decided to meet a dentist at a hotel. The experience wasn’t glamorous or nearly as sexy as I thought it might be. However, I came away from the experience thinking, “It wasn’t bad.” I began to think that if I just had one appointment a month, I could pay my car loan with it, and have a little extra money. Eventually, I chose to work as an escort exclusively. At that time, the reason I gave up my programming job was the free time. I was caring for a family member with a serious illness—the free time and money was a huge benefit.

        
Q
. Do you have any moral problem with what you do?

        
A
. I do not have a moral problem with having sex for money, as long as it’s safe, and between consenting adults. However, I have always been concerned about how the social and legal issues may affect my future and the people that I love.

        
Q
. What kind of clients do you have?

        
A
. My clients are generally white, married, and professional males, between forty and fifty years old, with incomes over $100,000 a year. They tend to be doctors, lawyers, and businessmen looking to get away for a few hours in the middle of the day.

        
Q
. How many of your clients are married men?

        
A
. Almost all of my clients are married. I would say easily over 90 percent. I’m not trying to justify this business, but these are men looking for companionship. They are generally not men that couldn’t have an affair [if they wanted to], but men who want this tryst with no strings attached. They’re men who want to keep their lives at home intact.

        
Q
. What do your clients’ wives know or think about them coming to you?

        
A
. I rarely got the opportunity to find out if the wives were okay with it, but I did see several couples, so I assume
they
were okay with it.

        
Q
. Do you know the real names of your clients?

        
A
. Yes. Always. I insist that they give me their full names and their place of work so that I can contact them there before we meet. I also check their identification when we meet. I also use verification companies, which assist escorts in verification of clients. These companies do the verification of the client and put them in a database so that when the client wants to meet with a girl for the first time, he doesn’t have to go through the verification process again. For a fee, I can call in and they will tell me if the client has a history of giving the girls problems, where he works, and his full name.

        
Q
. What are your out-of-pocket costs?

        
A
. $300 to $500 a month for my online basic ads

             
$100 a year for the website

             
$100 a month for a phone

             
$1,500 a year for photography

             
If I was touring then there were extra expenses such as travel costs, hotels, and more advertising costs.

        
Q
. Do you have any regrets about your chosen profession?

        
A
. Being an escort provided me with many opportunities that I’m not sure I would have gotten if I had not been an escort. That said, my choice to become an escort had a definite cost associated with it beyond the advertising, photos, and websites. I believe it is close to impossible to have a healthy relationship while working. So it can be a lonely life. In addition, hiding my job from my friends and family proved to be difficult for many reasons.