Bradley R. Weissenberger wrote:There's no rule against picking up tabs.

I find it gratifying to pick up tabs.

Not that I want anyone to expect it, but it's gratifying. I get as much out of it as it costs me, most of the time.

I dare say giving a few dollars to a panhandler is more gratifying to the giver than the few bucks are worth to the giver (if not the recipient). There are many selfish reasons for giving things away. Which is fine. There are more selfish reasons for taking, after all.

Mark Lansing wrote:I also remember spending a week in Chicago visiting a friend, and on the corner near his apartment there was a guy selling the homeless activist newspaper ever single day. As Fred said, and I had to agree, "Man, if he can spend five hours every say standing at the same corner asking for money for his newspaper, why can't he get a job? Hell, that's 90% of having a job, being able to show up every day."

There are millions of reasons why people can't or don't work straight jobs. Most of them are things we take for granted to the point where we don't even consider them (like having a picture I.D., for instance).

Having worked with nonprofits that provide services to homeless people, I can tell you that many homeless people simply aren't able to deal with the regimentation and the basic social interactions that are required to work a normal job. It isn't always because of addiction, either. Some people are deeply anti-social. Others have never been able to deal with authority in any official capacity.

Living in a society requires many compromises that some can't or won't make. This inability usually results in great suffering and hardship. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ability or willingness to do work.

Where I live there are highly self-organized, consistent, hard-working individuals who go to different neighborhoods every night with shopping carts and comb through residential recycle bins that are set out at the curb, looking for items that can be exchanged for small amounts of cash at recycling centers. It's obvious that these people take their 'jobs' seriously.

Here's what Max Jacob has to say on this matter:


THE BEGGAR WOMAN OF NAPLES

When I lived in Naples there was always a beggar woman at the gate of my palace, to whom I would toss some coins before climbing into my carriage. One day, surprised at never being thanked, I looked at the beggar woman. Now, as I looked at her, I saw that what I had taken for a beggar woman was a wooden case painted green which contained some red earth and a few half-rotten bananas . . .

Here's a recent Straight Dope on the instant topic, more to the point about their estimated intake from people having been taken in by them.

Here's something on beggars in Morocco, which contains the following:

Some 15% of the surveyed children beggars said they were "rented" for this activity at a weekly amount...

I remember seeing Will Oldham, David Berman, and Joe Pernice singing Ink Spots songs on the street. I mistook them for tuneless buskers and gave them a few coins. Fuckers never thanked me.

Angus Jung wrote:Where I live there are highly self-organized, consistent, hard-working individuals who go to different neighborhoods every night with shopping carts and comb through residential recycle bins that are set out at the curb, looking for items that can be exchanged for small amounts of cash at recycling centers. It's obvious that these people take their 'jobs' seriously.

Very much true.

Here's a recent Chicago Journal article on pallet collecting and other recycling.

Angus Jung wrote:There are millions of reasons why people can't or don't work straight jobs. Most of them are things we take for granted to the point where we don't even consider them (like having a picture I.D., for instance).

Having worked with nonprofits that provide services to homeless people, I can tell you that many homeless people simply aren't able to deal with the regimentation and the basic social interactions that are required to work a normal job. It isn't always because of addiction, either. Some people are deeply anti-social. Others have never been able to deal with authority in any official capacity.

Living in a society requires many compromises that some can't or won't make. This inability usually results in great suffering and hardship. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ability or willingness to do work.

So what do we do with or for these people? Is there a better way of dealing with their problems than having them ask folks for change on the street? Beyond the fact a lot of people aren't especially sympathetic to having people ask them for money on a regular basis, it doesn't make for an especially reliable source of income, especially in small communities.

BadComrade wrote:
My co-worker (the one that saw the woman counting about $50 in singles) once gave a ride to a guy who was begging him at a gas station. They drove a bit, the guy asked him to turn down a street, and then he put a gun to Joe's side, and took the $500 from his wallet.

Everyone's got a story, people who lurk over panhandlers counting their change included. (Funny how these tend to be the people who get guns to their ribs. Chicken and egg I guess.)

I bummed around the States for a while when I was 19 (not literally--I wasn't begging and I had a crappy car to sleep in) and I got drunk w/ vagrants a few times. Never had any problems. I bought some booze for some old black dudes in Memphis once and got ripped in the middle of the afternoon with them, camera bag at my side.

In the midst of a super crappy window of my life I once teamed up with an east Vancouver junkie to do crack. I had the $, he had the expertise to buy w/o getting fucked over. A fine pair.

Fuck your morality, people. There but for the grace of class privilege, psycho-chemical good fortune, a daddy who didn't fuck you up the ass, whatever ("God").

A couple years ago the the business association of Edmonton's trendiest bar/shopping district instituted a programme against panhandlers whereby meters were put up, and every time you were asked for change you were suppose to plug the meter instead; and this was to eradicate the panhandlers' blight upon respectable boutique shopping and weekend booze warriordom.

A bunch of businesses--including every independent record store on the strip--actively fought the plan for the pogrom it was. It died quickly.

Street newspapers are a great thing. And pretty much accomplish what the business association tried to, but from the bottom up. In the advent of Our Voice venders, there's basically no panhandling on the strip.

Anyway, no one has a moral obligation to give anything and I don't judge those who don't. But if you don't give money to panhandlers and then get high and mighty about not giving whilst berating the poor, you are a perfect cock.

Last Christmas Day I gave 20 bucks to a guy. I didn't want to make a big deal of it, but he caught up to me after I walked past and gave me a hug. I walked away in tears.

Mark Lansing wrote:So what do we do with or for these people? Is there a better way of dealing with their problems than having them ask folks for change on the street? Beyond the fact a lot of people aren't especially sympathetic to having people ask them for money on a regular basis, it doesn't make for an especially reliable source of income, especially in small communities.

What should we do for them? If you see a bum, and he looks like he could use a few bucks, give him a few bucks. You're not going to solve the myriad problems and satisfy the disparate needs of the homeless population with a monolithic program of any sort, so help the ones you cross paths with as individuals. Give him a couple of bucks.

There is a paranoid right-wing fantasy that anyone who appears desperate and asks for a handout is actually running a scam of some sort. The cold logic of the unsympathetic is that defeating such scams is somehow more noble than being overly generous in case one might fall victim to a scam.

Fuck that. Every single thing a homeless person does is technically illegal -- a scam -- and this is one of the tragedies of the situation. The homeless cannot do anything for themselves other that follow the advice of the ungenerous and "get a job!" As if such were possible for a filthy, undocumented, homeless, toothless, deranged alcoholic. "Get a job" indeed.

As if they weren't working their asses off just to avoid freezing to death. Fuck all you "get a job" people.

Angus Jung wrote:There are millions of reasons why people can't or don't work straight jobs. Most of them are things we take for granted to the point where we don't even consider them (like having a picture I.D., for instance)... homeless people simply aren't able to deal with the regimentation and the basic social interactions that are required to work a normal job. It isn't always because of addiction, either. Some people are deeply anti-social. Others have never been able to deal with authority in any official capacity.

Living in a society requires many compromises that some can't or won't make. This inability usually results in great suffering and hardship. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ability or willingness to do work.

BINGO.

now, will someone here please tell me what the "funk sucks" rant was about? i'm all ears.