Hustle and Cash Flow

If it weren’t for the Internet I wouldn’t know we were in the middle of an economic crisis/slowdown/correction/recession. This offer came in the mail last week:

The offer arrived with a red “decoder” which revealed a whole $1000 credit limit.

The offer arrived for my husband, not for me, but I’m still a little offended. What is this, Highlights for Children? If I respond within 10 days do I get a free tote bag?

Then I saw this on my way to work:

What a wonderful juxtaposition. Apparently it’s still possible to buy a house with no money down, but if you want to put a car in the garage you will have to come up with $299. Fortunately, with my new MasterCard I can afford the down payment on THREE cars!

It’s a bit off-topic and a bit out of date, but I enjoyed this article too much to not pass along:

My Life as a Hot Woman

The (male) author really captured the essence of the female experience. It’s an entertaining read for any curious males. The author describes what happened when he took control of his nanny’s online dating life - effectively posing as a woman online.

When I was sixteen I used to use all those websites that offer you points for signing up for things. One of them offered me points for making a profile on some dating site. I uploaded the goofiest picture I could find. My hair was various shades of brown, blonde, and orange at the time (like I said, I was sixteen) and a weird mess. I was sucking in my cheeks and you couldn’t tell what I looked like at all. In my profile I wrote, “I am just signing up for this site to get points. Do not message me. I’m underage and I probably hate you.” I still got at least half a dozen messages a day. At first it was funny, but eventually I got really annoyed and deleted my profile. My point is that with an obviously fake profile and nothing that should generate interest I still had guys hitting on me online. That was when I learned that men are really not that picky.

I wonder if the online dating experience has improved any over the years. Maybe it has for some people.

Found at HousingPANIC:

Economists predict housing prices may fall by as much as 50% in some areas:

US homes may lose as much as half their value in some US cities as the housing bust deepens, according to Yale University professor Robert Shiller. Meanwhile, Martin  Feldstein of Harvard University says that experience suggests that the dramatic decline in residential construction provides an early warning of a coming recession. The likelihood of a recession is increased by what is happening in credit markets and in mortgage borrowing. Feldstein says that most of these forces are inadequately captured by the formal macroeconomic models used by the Federal Reserve and other macro forecasters.

Here in Phoenix the situation with new construction is the best harbinger of the overall real estate market. There’s a huge glut of new construction right now and my anecdotal research shows that it’s currently cheaper to buy a new house than a comparable used one. The developers understand the reality of the situation and - without emotion or personal finances getting in the way - price their goods accordingly. It’s commonplace to find new homes with prices that have been reduced by as much as a third since the beginning of the year - and they’re still on the market. I don’t think we’re anywhere near the bottom yet.

As someone who reads business and sales books in order to apply the techniques to stripping, I was amused to read Ten Sales and Marketing Tips I Learned from Strippers.

Stripping is a strange hybrid of sales and entertainment. You can make good money if you’re good at either one, but to really excel you have to be good at both. My weakness is in the sales department. I’ve always been an entertainer, but I’ve never been very good at sales. I’ve gotten quite a bit better since I started dancing, though, and I’m always trying to improve. Fortunately for me, where my job involves sales it’s probably the easiest sales job out there. There’s no cold-calling, the customers gather in a central location to be sold to, and the majority of them have already made a decision to buy. The only thing left for me to do is convince them to buy from me.

I’ve been in hiding for over a week now. Hiding from the search engines, I suppose, and the media. This is not a political blog. I never wanted it to be. I wrote one political post and it turned into a big thing. I didn’t write about my feelings on this before because I didn’t want to negatively impact the opportunities that little post opened up for other people. The interest has mostly passed and I think it’s safe to come out now.

If anything this experience has shown me that the Ron Paul movement is made up of a handful of people who are grasping at straws to make it look like Ron Paul has much more real support than his numbers show. As far as I (being the inspiration for the “Strippers for Ron Paul” movement) can tell there is no “Strippers for Ron Paul” movement. There is me (the unwitting founder of the non-movement) and another woman who apparently worked as a stripper very briefly more than a decade ago and went on TV to talk about it. Let me clarify something: I am still totally confused over how anyone could have interpreted that post as overwhelmingly positive. It really wasn’t. It was more or less a casual remark that I had changed my voter registration despite my extreme cynicism because it was really easy to do. I am not a “Stripper for Ron Paul.” I am some chick on the Internet who is probably going to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries. My motivation for doing so has nothing to do with working in the sex industry. It’s entirely financially motivated. I suppose I have to clarify that statement, because most people perceive their job as the beginning and end of their financial well-being. I don’t. For me a job (any job) is just a way to attain seed money for investments so that in a decade or so I won’t have to have a job. I care less about how any Presidential candidate will impact my specific job and more about how he will impact my ability to grow my wealth regardless of what I do for work.

I would like to thank IConrad at Functionalism in Action for being the only blogger in the entire blogosphere that managed to choose an appropriate quote and not take my “support” out of context. As a transhumanist myself, I appreciate and fully agree with that post.

As I said, this whole experience has shown me that the Ron Paul movement is not based on much that is solid. I might vote for Giuliani instead. Someone asked me why I like Giuliani. Despite the fact that I like Ron Paul well enough, I am not a Libertarian as most people seem to have assumed. I’m not overly committed to the ideologies of freedom (short summary: capitalism - yes; democracy - no.) I like Giuliani because his positions more or less mirror my opinions on things. I agree with most of the decisions he made as mayor of New York. Most of all, I like the fact that he’s sensible enough to realize that what worked in NYC will not necessarily work as federal policy and gutsy enough to say so. Most politicians take a simplistic, black-and-white position and stick to it unwaveringly for fear of being called “indecisive” or accused of “flip-flopping.”

We will now return to your regularly scheduled sporadic posting on various matters of economics, personal finance, and how it all relates to my job.

Here’s a funny story about the most stereotypical couple ever:

WENDOVER, Utah  —  The police chief’s wife was arrested during a drug bust at a Nevada nightclub where she works as a stripper named “Ecstasy.”

As someone who works in a much-stereotyped industry, I try not to stereotype others too much. “Dirty cop” is one stereotype to which I cling unapologetically. I find this story kind of hilarious. It will be even funnier if it turns out that the drugs she was selling were “confiscated” from criminals. Chief Tripp doesn’t seem too bright. He should have had his wife work in his district so he would have known when the busts were taking place. Duh!

Legal Bitch wrote yesterday about the flawed logic behind the minimum wage. I couldn’t agree more.

As a stripper, I don’t receive a wage. A lot of people think strippers are paid like waiters and waitresses: a small, less than minimum hourly wage plus tips. In fact, in the vast majority of clubs we are independent contractors. We pay a flat fee to work every shift. Additionally, many clubs have minimum tip-outs that dancers must pay to the DJ, bouncers, bartender, house mom, and/or managers. Some clubs also take a cut of each dance or each champagne room sold. I think most people would be surprised to know just how much dancers pay to work. The most I ever paid for one night was $200, but house fees alone can range anywhere from $10-300 or more depending on the club. If a dancer doesn’t make that on any given night she pays it out of her own pocket.

Charging a fee to work is not illegal, but many clubs violate labor laws all the time by treating dancers as employees when they are not. Some examples of these violations are requiring dancers to work a certain number of hours or to tip the club employees (who do receive a paycheck.) Every once in awhile some girl will figure out that these policies break the law and try to do something about it. The only time this has ever actually worked was at the Lusty Lady peep show in San Francisco. This much-lauded effort received wide publicity and was made into a documentary called Live Nude Girls Unite. The end result is so bad that it should serve as a dire warning not just to dancers but to independent contractors of all stripes who think their lives would be better as employees. The dancers at the Lusty Lady are paid between $14-23/hour. I don’t think I have to tell anyone that that kind of money doesn’t go very far in San Francisco. It’s certainly not good money for dancing anywhere in the country. To put it in perspective, I make at least four times the upper end of that range - AFTER paying all my fees and illegal tip-outs - and I don’t even have to deal with a keeping a schedule.

I am a stripper because it pays a lot better than working a “straight” job. I don’t want to see my industry regulated. I don’t want to receive a paycheck that is far less than what I can make on my own. I certainly don’t want to pool my tips. Legal violations come with the territory, and I’m fine with that. Before I was a stripper I worked in a “straight” industry where the situation was just the opposite - I was an employee treated as an IC without any of the benefits of being an employee. The difference was that the money wasn’t good enough to put up with the mistreatment.

I just changed my voter registration from Indepedent to Republican so I can vote for Ron Paul in the primaries.

I wasn’t going to do this, but my younger brother encouraged me to do so. My brother is four years younger than me, and this will be the first time he can vote in the Presidential election. I think I was pretty much completely jaded about politics by the time I could vote, although I was intensely interested before then. Part of what jaded me was volunteering on an actual political campaign. 9/11 didn’t help either (ironic - it seemed like the rest of the country was awash in patriotism immediately thereafter.) I don’t really follow politics these days. I have my preferences. For the long shot, my ideal is Ron Paul, but I’ll be very happy with Giuliani, who I think is by far our best bet, although it would probably help his chances if he changed his name to something more phonetic. I’ll vote for any Republican who gets the nomination, unless it’s Mitt Romney. If Romney gets the nomination I will vote Democrat, unless the Dem is Clinton. If the lineup is Clinton-Romney I am changing all my US dollars to gold and leaving the country. (My Dem preference, by the way, is Obama.)

Part of what motivated me to finally change my party affiliation was discovering this video, in which Ron Paul eloquently and passionately addresses the need for monetary reform in front of Congress.

Since my main interest in politics these days is financial, I’m a fan of Ron Paul. I believe he would be good for the economy and (most importantly) for my wallet. The question is, will he just be another Ross Perot? His support is great enough that I can see him taking enough votes away from Guiliani that we’ll end up with with Romney as the Republican candidate. I’m more scared of having Romney elected than having Ron Paul not elected (for those wondering why I hate Romney, I lived briefly in Massachusetts and worked there longer and I found it horrifyingly unpleasant. Also, I don’t trust anyone who wears magic underwear. Call me intolerant.) The most likely scenario, I think, is that Ron Paul will end up being another Howard Dean - lots of Internet hype, but falling flat at the polls. Even if Ron Paul gets the nomination, I question his chances of winning against any Democrat. My money is on the Dems next year - they do have that whole “we didn’t start the war” thing going for them.

This is why, until now, I haven’t been able to fully back Ron Paul. My concerns haven’t changed, but the conclusion I reached is that I’m willing to take the risk that Ron Paul will just be a vote leech in exchange for the slim chance that he could actually get elected. If any of the other major contenders get elected it will be the same mediocrity as we’ve had for the past century or so. If Ron Paul gets elected I will be able to put off my plan of eventually fleeing to Malta for at least four years. That’s a chance worth taking, in my estimation.

So there you have it: my ringing endorsement of Ron Paul for President. It took me less than five minutes to change my voter registration online through my Secretary of State’s website. Some states may require you to print off and mail in a form, but in all cases it should be easy enough to find the necessary form online. I would encourage any Libertarians and Independents who back Ron Paul to temporarily change their registration to Republican in order to vote for him in the primaries. If enough of us do so, he just might stand a chance.

America: Freedom to Fascism is the most interesting documentary I’ve seen this year. It was written, directed, and produced by Aaron Russo.

The film’s basic premise is Aaron Russo’s quest to find out whether or not there is actually a legal basis for the federal income tax. He starts with the basic arguments we’ve all heard before (the Sixteenth Amendment was never actually ratified, unapportioned taxes are illegal) and goes on to conduct some really interesting interviews. First he interviews people from the tax honesty movement (notably the We the People Foundation) who expound on the reasons they believe that the income tax is illegal and discuss various court cases involving tax evasion. The more compelling interviews, though, are with several former IRS agents and employees (including a former IRS criminal investigator) who left the IRS after becoming convinced that they were involved in an unethical organization that illegally prosecutes innocent people. All of their individual stories have a common theme: becoming curious about the tax law, they tried to find the law that requires Americans to pay income taxes. Unable to do so, they appealed to their superiors, at which point they were either asked to resign or chose to do so. Two of the agents interviewed admit that they themselves have no filed income taxes since leaving the IRS.

After the typical “the other side won’t talk to us” shots of the film crew being kicked off IRS property, Russo then attempts to get an answer by going to the source: Sheldon Cohen, author of the tax code and former IRS commissioner. This is probably the most astonishing part of the whole film. Cohen, an apparently intelligent man, admits that the law states that compliance with the tax code is voluntary, but then asserts that the word “voluntary” is a euphemism for “mandatory!” 1984, anyone? In response to Russo’s appeal to the Supreme Court ruling that the Sixteenth Amendment did not create a new tax, Cohen says, “You’re going to take a 1920 [Supreme Court] case and superimpose it on the entire tax code which was written after it? No…” In other words, the Supreme Court’s decision is irrelevant. After a few minutes of skirting around Russo’s questions, Cohen angrily cuts the interview short, insulting Russo.

The middle portion of the film focuses on individual examples of innocent people who have been victimized by the IRS. Although emotionally compelling, personal stories are always my least favorite part of any documentary because I prefer factual evidence over emotional appeals. The story of boxing champion Joe Louis, who was harassed by the IRS until his death for the taxes on money he donated to the war effort, however, is a truly heartbreaking one.

Russo touches briefly on the issue of the Federal Reserve (explained in much greater detail in The Money Masters.) I believe the point he was trying to make is that if the government took back control over our currency the income tax could be eliminated fully since virtually all of the income tax goes towards the interest on our national debt and serves only to make this select group of bankers richer. I understood this point, but I think that someone watching the movie with no prior knowledge of the Fed would have been a bit confused at this point.

The film is solid and compelling for the first two-thirds, but then deviates sharply into an entirely different subject: the national ID card (the REAL ID) and ties it in with research into tracking devices that could be implanted into humans. In my opinion it is a real shame that Russo chose to include this bit in the film. It may or may not be an actual threat, but this discussion only detracts from the discussion of the legality of the income tax. The income tax is a very real and present issue that we KNOW is illegal, useless, and is not just a threat to our liberty but is actively impinging on it every day. There is room for discussion about the national ID card and the right to privacy, but not in a film about taxes. Unfortunately, it only drives the film into nut job conspiracy theory territory, while it is otherwise a very sound and compelling film.

A bit of background about Mr. Russo: he is a one-time Libertarian Party Presidential nominee and he founded the original, defunct Constitution Party (as opposed to the currently active Constitution Party, which has an explicit Christian bias.) This is one major criticism I have about this film; Russo tries to present himself as a completely objective investigative filmmaker, but he is actually quite the opposite. He introduces himself by discussing his accomplishments in the entertainment industry, but says nothing of his political involvement. Although it’s certainly not uncommon for documentary filmmakers to conceal their bias, it does disappoint me a bit that he chose to do so in this case.

Despite those criticisms, I highly recommend this film to anyone. I was already pretty familiar with the Tax Honesty movement and some of the arguments, but I was still amazed at the egregious disregard for the law displayed by those who are supposed to be upholding it. For that alone this movie is worth watching.

The entire movie is available on Google video: here.

While my brother was visiting we took a trip over the border to Nogales, Mexico. It was my second time visiting Mexico, and for the second time I had nothing to declare upon leaving. I can’t buy anything in Mexico because I can’t haggle. Well, I suppose I could do it, but I won’t. I absolutely hate the concept, and I hate the idea of doing it. At the same time, it’s a big part of the culture there, and I try to be respectful of other cultures, so I simply avoid even getting into that situation for fear of causing offense with my refusal to haggle.

Part of the reason I hate haggling is because it feels really dirty for me, a rich American, to try to bargain with someone in a developing nation who is almost certainly living in poverty. A dollar means a lot more to them than it does to me. At the same time, I can’t just pay the ridiculously inflated prices they initially quote because I can’t bring myself to overpay for lousy trinkets. Another reason is pure pride. From my American perspective, the only reason to haggle is if you can’t afford the asking price. I can afford to pay $30 for a painted bowl, so to try to get it for $15 would be to admit that I couldn’t afford to pay $30.

(As a side note, although I don’t apply the same standard of pride to items on sale, I don’t specifically seek out sales either. I buy what I want when I want it, as long as the price is fair. I almost never buy anything on sale that I would not buy at full price. I think I come out ahead in the long run over people who have closets full of unused “bargains.”)

I realize that both these reasons are probably neurotic, and in no way do I condemn any American who enjoys visiting Mexico for the haggling (I am told there are many of them.) It’s just a hang-up I have, but it’s one that makes me very uncomfortable.

Since I work in Phoenix, I often dance for Mexicans. As a group, my overall impression of Mexicans is highly favorable. I’ve had some great Mexican customers. I speak a little bit of Spanish, so if they speak a little bit of English we get along great. Usually, the only problem I have is when they try to haggle for dance prices. Our dances are already a bargain in Arizona at $10 (most parts of the country the price is $20/song) and the ones who try to haggle usually offer $5. I guess they expect me to counter with $9, and then they’ll offer $7, perhaps. We never get to that point. As soon as anyone of any race tries to get me to dance for cheap I just walk away. Someday I’m going to learn enough Spanish to adequately explain that haggling is frowned upon in America and that it is especially insulting in my industry. I know that when it’s coming from a Mexican (or someone else from a haggling culture), especially someone who is new to the States, that it’s not intended to be offensive, but it is.