<i>"Why are high-paid prostitutes paid highly?"</i><p>Seems to be begging the question a bit, perhaps? (With evidence of bias towards proving his pet economic theory).<p>Further, the reference quoted only found a high hourly wage for prostitute through scanning records. That high hourly could be a matter of the particular "worker" only getting a few gigs and having to invest unpaid time in setting up the transactions as well as having to share earning with pimps/escort services. Considering this kind of thing happens on the edge of legality, the real income of an escort probably couldn't be found through merely looking at accounting records.