"Why lie? It's for beer."

I'd rather they said it was for beer than standing really close and silently shoving a mug into my stomach, which has happened before, but it's not likely to make me give them the money.

I like to think I'm doing my bit for the community... looking out for those the charities won't help, y'know?

Now that's hobo style!

Anyway: being appalled that a poor person asks your money is like being appalled that you don't have wings and can't fly -- for god's sake, what in the whole history of the planet would make you expect any different?

I used to give food to panhandlers (I don't want to support drug habits besides my own) until it was refused or immediately thrown away several times in a row. That probably has a lot to do with the demographic of this southern college town I'm in, though.

I guess I do know the reasons people act appalled, though:

(1) Naive and stubborn belief in the Horatio Alger idea that any able-bodied motivated male can find adequate work and housing (despite the fact that capitalism acknowledges and depends on someone's unemployment and failure)

(2) Bizarre belief that people who are fucked up should just stop being fucked up (as opposed to accepting that in a city of millions, some people are bound to have major personal problems and wind up desperate)

(3) Cruel belief that desperate people should be all noble and suffer / starve / freeze to death silently (as opposed to accepting that when people have nothing, they're gonna ask for charity, and that's just how life is)

I think it's that people are appalled that there are poor people, or that they have to deal with someone who represents a completely different culture than they feel they live in. That sounds odd and xenophobic, but after living and working in a suburb of a mid-sized city, it's really how it feels. I have a coworker who called the police to check out why a black woman was sitting on the curb at the end of her block for a couple hours -- she didn't even ask her!

So the answer to nabisco's "what in the whole history of the planet would make you expect any different?" is past experience. I know people who have grown up in smaller towns, only socialize among middle class friends, and live and work in suburban areas. I'm pretty sure that some of these people have encountered a panhandler once or twice in their lifetime, and been scared witless by the whole thing. They don't see panhandlers, so they don't expect to ever see them and don't understand why someone doesn't do something about it.

so fucking OTM its depressing - totally the case with where I grew up.

This is a fact?

My opinion is that a great deal of it is the delusion or (deliberate) misunderstanding of how things actually work. That if you only believe in direct causes, rather than systemic causes. If you only believe in direct causes, then everything that happens to you is your fault and of your doing alone. You should take responsibility for your choices(and starve, freeze, die, etc, apparently), by shirking it, morality will break down, society will collapse, etc. Those who complain that it's systemic causes, that the local economy & job market is fucked, are just lazy and not willing to put in a hard day's labor for their keep.

It's a great way to reassure yourself that these people don't deserve compassion, don't deserve empathy; that they haven't put the same effort into achieving the good life that you have(and of course you got to where you are by the sweat of your own brow and not a single other person helped you, not your dad who got you the interview in his friend's company, or the university paid for by taxpayer dollars where you received training on a student loan backed & insured by taxpayer-funded public services), then they're taking advantage of your labor, and want to get something for nothing, so FUCK them, let them go toil in the workhouses.

Protestant/calvinist work-ethic justifying assholism.

This is a fact?

plenty of Alan Greenspan types go on about how we need a certain level of unemployment or else inflation will go nuts, etc.

This is a fact?"

uh considering money only has value because other people don't have it, yeah.

Yeah, this is definitely true, and I certainly remember the first time I went to a big city and saw homeless people -- it's new and shocking. But going to a city and being continually freaked out by this is like going to a city and being continually freaked out by skyscrapers: sooner or later you should probably accept that that's what urban centers are like. Plus when people are genuinely new to encountering homelessness, I think they tend to be either scared or idealistic about helping -- the guy in this article is neither, having hardened to a point of politicized annoyance that suggests he's not exactly new to the phenomenon. (That's one of the things that bugs me most about him, actually, the way that he's relentlessly imposing his own political bugbears -- like race issues -- onto the fact that people ask him for money, even though every one of them has a whole different non-political story of how they got there.)

Re: capitalism, yeah, I think it's well acknowledged that unemployment is one of those inevitables that you balance out against others, like inflation. Along with other inevitables, like the fact that if education is a commodity, someone will not have as much access to it. The only protection against this is for the government to take up the role of providing public services and welfare, which the U.S. doesn't exactly do to the point where you'd expect homelessness to vanish. (In fact we're still dealing with a great surge of homelessness from the government deciding not to house or hospitalize a lot of mentally ill people who couldn't manage it themselves.)

which means, basically, you could easily have ended up in this position, with slightly differing circumstances. or, ok, i could have done

Now I live in Austin, where the downtown region especially is full of panhandlers, and my friends from SA are consistently shocked by the number of homeless people within a stone's throw of my current apt.

Why do you find more homeless folks/panhandlers in middle class areas? Is that the "happy medium" between upper crust's 100%intolerance of them and the working class being too hard-up to give?

ah xpost

well there's hobo symbols. I would guess those are pretty arcane/out-of-use though.

Incidentally, how has The Big Issue caught on over there?

Also in rich areas they get rid of them, and in poor areas it's easier for them to get by -- cheaper shelter, more social tolerance, easier to be part of the community. (Not that it's "easier" to be poor, just that there's not as much of a class barrier isolating you from everyone else.)

W/r/t making mistakes, there's definitely this giant gulf in attitudes: I really have trouble who think "it's their responsibility, so screw them." It seems like a really childish way of thinking about human behavior. (Also an inability to deal with complexities, like how people can be responsible for their own mistakes, but those same mistakes can still be based on bad situations they've been put in.)

Tokyo and other cities in Japan have significant homeless populations but no panhandling (it is extremely rare). The homeless generally do odd jobs, like collecting cans and selling magazines, to make money. The country does not have social services that are superior to other rich countries in the world, and organized charities dealing with homelessness are relatively few.

(I don't really know, but it seems it could be).

This shit can happen to anyone at anytime, and the extra scorn is borne of the scrambling fear that this can't happen to the writer.

Either that, or he's just a repellent douche.

xpost

Hate to break your bubble but there are a lot of homeless people in Japan. A lot. :-( It's really sad to witness. Most Japanese tend to ignore them, as if they literally don't exist. Well, that was my perception of the whole thing in Japan. It might be different.

My city is however beggar-free. There were two homeless people - I mean, ones that were clearly just sleeping in the park. One died and the other... Well, I don't know what happened to the guy. Years ago my dad once walked by him while the bloke was sleeping on a bench. My dad didn't want to hand over the money so he just dropped it on the ground hoping the guy would notice and pick it up. (I think he didn't want to humiliate the guy or something. My dad's the nicest guy. He would go buy sandwiches and sit next to a homeless person and hand it over...) Anyway the guy did notice but screamed at my dad:"Hey, you lost some money." hah! Anyway, yeah, we're beggar-free. Our city doesn't allow it (read: make sure they are off the streets) so the tourists think we're such a bliss city to live in.

don't have it. there is "street spirit" though which is news from the homeless with a homeless slant; there is some controversy about it in general and whether it does any good, also, I don't think most people care to read news about the homeless, so I'm not sure how well it sells.

(I guess I just cancelled out what Hoosteen said, though the majority of the panhandlers end up begging where there's a lot of congested traffic, i.e. around where access roads to busy highways and major thoroughfares intersect. Though that's pretty much it as far as the number of panhandlers go, and yeah, our city is pretty blue collar, but there are areas of affluence, predominantly upper middle class, that are growing in size and population.)

Is it like the mafia?

Note that these commandments, most of which seem sensible and straight-forward, just so happen to include this:

5. The Fair Tax is our nation’s best potential engine for charity growth. Those who make wisecracks about compassionate conservatism being an oxymoron generally believe in “compelled charity,” which is the true oxymoron. Nancy Pelosi and her followers are the most uncompassionate and uncharitable people in America. They want the IRS to collect our “charity” at the point of a gun. But charity, once compelled, ceases to be charity. If we want to see an explosion of charitable giving in America, we must abolish the IRS. The Fair Tax (see www.Boortz.com) is our only realistic hope.

Monday Jan 8, 2007
Is the Criminal Justice System Broken?

Average Vote:
Wednesday Jan 3, 2007
Defamation Nation

Average Vote:
Tuesday Jan 2, 2007
Does Ben Harper Want a Race War?

--

even in his bit supporting Keith Ellison, he still manages to work this in:

In that respect Muslim extremists are like American feminists whose emotional instability justifies Jihad – whether against the “infidel” or the “fetus” – under any conceivable circumstance. Those of us who oppose their fanaticism can take some consolation in the fact that the Muslim extremists will eventually martyr themselves – just as the feminists will eventually abort themselves – out of the gene pool.

yeah, i remember my great-aunt and uncle in houston going on and on about this (when they weren't talking about the impending race war): "you know those panhandlers by the freeway make over $100,000 a year. they drive over in cadillacs blah blah blah blah..."

unbelievable

is it true ben harper got sonned by a wite kid after a aol beef??????

There was some punk girl spare changing while talking on her cell phone near union square last night.
i wanted to yell at her.

"PUNKA!!"

"I believe you ought to set your budget in order, young miss! I have done the same, allowing me to preserve my dignity!"

"if you can afford a portable telephonic device, madam, you are in no position to be propositioning me. now be off with you!"

There was some punk girl spare changing while talking on her cell phone near union square last night.
i wanted to yell at her.

i saw a lot of this kind of thing in California a couple of years ago, except they were more hippie than punk. "oh lemme guess: you need gas money for your 4-Runner so you can make the next Trey Anastasio Band show hmm? nothing doin, stinky."

WHAT if they were going to see Les Claypool? y/n?

i would buy them food, but give them no $$$