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The numbers will be different in places where prostitution is legal, though. 200 dollars per hour is a lot, though that number obviously does not take into account downtime, the brothel's cut of the revenue (one document indicates that it's 50 percent), etc.
I live in the Bay Area and work in a department where a lot of the men here are cheating on their spouses. I’ve been invited to participate in the same activities but denied it. Some of them are “Asian massage parlor” styled locations with the windows completely blacked out from the inside ($120 an hour from what I’m told). The other is an online escort service where you can see pics of these girls and things are handled through a WhatsApp phone number and they only do same day and time appointments; nothing with advance notice ($180-$280 an hour). And to become a client, they require you to text them a copy of your drivers license/ID and need two references of people who have already used their service (so it’s referral based, hence how co-workers play into this).
A lot of these guys I’m friends with and they’re otherwise good people, but my personal opinion of the lot of them has definitely dropped in some areas. You want to visit an escort service? Fine. You want to cheat on your spouse and potentially ruin your family? Fuck you.
I mean to a certain degree the fencing-off of these activities to pay-for-play gives incentives for everybody involved to keep it as transactional as possible and stop it snowballing into family-ruining consequences. I'm not particularly interested in using such services (though more since I just don't find paying for sex sexy than out of any particular moral condemnation) but I'm in a culture where it's a pretty open secret that a lot of middle-aged men have girlfriends or take boys trips a ton, and it kinda keeps things ticking over? It'd probably be better if they guys kept things in their pants (though then you've got to argue what obligations the wives have with regards to sexual availability) and Lou Pai stripper impregnations do happen but a certain level of circumspect whoring just seems to be pretty Lindy throughout human history. A lot of cultures don't really consider it 'cheating' in the same way that they'd handle somebody having an affair with a co-worker or neighbor.
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Then there's unbillable hours like finding clients, travel, maintenance of looks, etc. Some clients might reimburse these admin hours and some might not. No health insurance and no 401K match plan. Money is usually untaxed so that's a big plus, but it's probably hard to get a mortgage with this type of cash income.
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