Yes, but they were under the 1099 reporting limits, while they both owe taxes on them, neither were required to report it to the IRS... assuming this is the one and only time they paid each other for services rendered.
The replies explain all there is to explain in that example. If each economist thinks that eating shit is worth $100 then, well, that's what it's worth.
It is fascinating that someone can tell an obvious joke with an obvious point, where the characters themselves spell out what’s wrong, and yet we can be certain someone will genuinely believe and defend that “no no, actually eating a random pile of shit you found on the floor makes sense and is worth it”.
Has it occurred to you, especially since one of the economists in the joke admits they feel they ate shit for nothing, that they actually do not feel the exercise was worth it? Have you never spent money on something, thinking it would be worth it, then afterwards realised it was a waste of money? Have you also never taken a job and then realised “I didn’t charge enough for the trouble”?
I’m reminded of a bit of news I heard a while back, where one teenager challenged a friend to eat rat shit they found on the street. The eater died shortly after, because the poop contained rat poison. I doubt any of them found it worth it.
It's not an obvious joke. It seems closer to a puzzle in that the reader must discover that the $100 was for entertainment. This is a common class of puzzle where money changes hands between two people and results in a surprising conclusion.
A better gist may be the value of entertainment is temporary.
If instead it was just one person and they went to a movie theater. If you ignore the entertainment value it may just look like the person through away the admission cost.
More like not everyone agrees with the point of the joke. They didn't eat shit for nothing, the watching economist paid for the entertainment, why else would they have offered to pay to watch them if not for the entertainment? It's really no different to getting offered money to do a dare. The fact that they felt bad about it later is irrelevant, when the money was initially offered they both felt that they did get value from the act.
It's a political joke that uses a rhetorical sledge hammer to make it impossible to defend a particular principle. Is it so surprising that someone will still defend the principle?
