This week's 'shellacking' of the administration suggests all is not well among the people of the Land of the Free. While headlines crow of plunging unemployment rates and record high stock prices, middle-class incomes remain stagnant at best (and sliding in most cases) and job quality continues to tumble. There is, however, a silver lining... as Bloomberg reports [5], "in a sign of lower income and middle income consumer stress, some prostitutes are dropping prices." Of course, this is terrible news for GDP (now what happens if the price of 'blow' also drops) [6]. This confirms our previous note on the deflation of prices in the oldest profession in the world... [7] question is, will Yellen abhor this price drop too?
So you’ve got all these mixed signals out there, and what we could really use is a street-level view of the current wage environment. Zatlin does that, uh, literally, with his vice index. It includes prostitution, drugs, gambling and alcohol [8].
“In a sign of lower income and middle income consumer stress, some prostitutes are dropping prices,” he wrote.
“It is selective and limited in scope: mainly low-tier and mid-tier escorts. High-end escort prices are holding up.”
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As we noted previously, prices are going down... [7]
