A few years later, a major war broke out, and the government put limits on
worker salaries. Employers were unable to give raises. Instead, many employers
copied the idea of prostitution insurance, and the government winked, allowing
employers to circumvent the salary limits.
After the war was over and salary limits were lifted, the practice of offering
prostitution insurance remained widespread. In part, this was because income
tax rates were now higher than they had ever been, and prostitution insurance
was an untaxed fringe benefit.
Two decades after the war, a President with a compassionate agenda won a
landslide re-election victory. He delivered on campaign promises to use
taxpayer funds to provide prostitution insurance to the poor and to the
elderly.
Both consumers and the providers of prostitution services became accustomed to
using insurance cards. Paying for sex directly was frowned upon as something no
decent, middle-class person would do. Instead, the first thing that would
happen when a consumer visited a brothel or a prostitute was that the consumer
would present his insurance card to be photocopied.
Over time, prostitution became increasingly sophisticated and expensive.
Scientists and engineers developed expensive new sex toys, and highly-paid
specialists grew to outnumber ordinary general prostitutes.
Nonetheless, not everyone was happy. Some consumers were not employed by
companies offering prostitution insurance, nor were they eligible for
government-provided prostitution insurance. Sometimes, these consumers would
show up at brothels and expect free sex, with the cost shifted to other
consumers.
There was a market for individual prostitution insurance, but it never really
developed properly. Many consumers were willing to remain uninsured, and
insurance companies saw little opportunity to profit from this small market.
The cost of employer-provided prostitution insurance continued to rise. It
began to eat up a larger and larger portion of potential salary increases. Both
employers and employees became troubled by this trend.
Many people began to agitate for universal, government-provided prostitution
insurance, arguing that such systems were working in Canada and in many
European countries. Such a single-payer system for prostitution would solve the
growing problems of the uninsured and relieve the strains of employer-provided
prostitution insurance. Most importantly, it would allow people to continue to
be insulated from having to pay for sex.
Unfortunately, shifting the costs of prostitution insurance to taxpayers was
fiscally impossible. Prosticare, the government's popular insurance program for
the elderly, was projected to run into deficits of tens of trillions of dollars
in another 50 years. Forestalling such a bankruptcy was going to require
drastic cuts in future benefits. Trying to expand Prosticare to cover everyone
would have forced such cuts to take place today, and no politician wanted to
risk a confrontation with senior citizens. So although politicians talked a lot
about universal single-payer prostitution coverage, they never seriously
proposed enacting it.
The American public had grown accustomed to enjoying unlimited access to the
services of prostitutes. They continued to be averse to paying directly for
sex, and they had become increasingly insulated from having to do so. As a
result, America's share of GDP going to prostitution, already the highest in
the world, rose rapidly.
A few economists argued that Americans ought to try to get over their
discomfort with paying for sex. The economists proposed that Americans pay for
prostitution with their own money, in which case they would be less likely to
obtain unnecessary services. In addition, consumers would pay more attention to
cost, which would force prostitutes to lower their prices in order to avoid
losing business.
Most people, particularly prostitutes, were outraged by the economist's
suggestions. The idea of paying for sex was too offensive to contemplate. So
the existing prostitution insurance system kept stumbling along.
