When people say that panhandlers have been “failed” by capitalism, simply look at communism. If you go to Cuba, you will find beggars, more so than in any American city and only a small fraction of the Cuban economy makes even the average American per-capita income. In better economies, there is greater competition for workers and thus higher wages providing a “good” life for those willing to work.
P.S. Beggars and panhandlers here in Denver represent a broad spectrum of races proportional to population.
There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.
Pan-handling is a product of capitolism. As long as those who are deriving thier substanance from begging have an inflow of capitol, they’ll continue to do what they do to get that money, as any buisnessman would. If all the people in the world were to stop giving them spare change one day, very quickly the beggers would realize that it isn’t worthy their while. For capitolism to benifit a person, a person must make capitolism benifit him. In this case, I believe the pan-handlers are doing this, while those giving thier money may not be. This is the beuty of economic freedom: if we really decide that we don’t want pan-handlers in the streets, all we have to do is decide not to give them money. Bam. Capitolism works, and we don’t need to bring Big Brother into this.
Now back to the original pondering. To create a good law (ammendment, in this case) that will only stop pan-handling we must define pan-handling completely. Now, stop me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that only the agressive type of pan-handling bothered you. Is it really the pan-handling that you seek to get rid of then, or the obnoxious behavior? I don’t know Californian law, but I have faith that there are already laws that protect you from most kinds of harrasment. Couldn’t those who infringe upon your rights be brought up on charges because of the bad things they do?
“Nothing so much amuses me as this sign of the extent to which human beings have been carried away by fanaticism and stupidity; although the prodigious spectacle of folly we are facing here may be horrible, it is always interesting.” - Marquis de Sade, predicting Usenet
The opposite of capitalism is not communism, which in the case of the USSR, Cuba, and China, is an euphemism for “state capitalism”. In an actual social-democratic state, the economy is regulated by, not owned by, the government.
Those who commented on a different racial mix of panhandlers than my experience, do you get requests for money from well to do looking folks who, apparently, are just walking from the office to a restaurant for lunch and are taking the opportunity to pick up a couple extra bucks? These are the people that really irritate me. A co-worker of mine in Bmore used to pay for his lunch pretty consistently in this manner. I would like to see laws in place that made this kind of thing easily punished with heavy fines.
Yeah, the dishonest ones annoy me, too.
Whether I give usually depends on :
a) apparent need (tremors count a lot)
b) whether the approach is polite
c) whether I can afford lunch that day myself
No, I do not think panhandling should be outlawed. I’d rather them ASK for the money than just TAKE it.
Why does a recovering alcoholic like me give a shaky wino money instead of an AA speech?
Because he’s heard all that. He just isn’t ready to quit, or perhaps he never will be.
Delerium tremens is not only agonizing, it can be fatal(I was in the ER 3 times for it). If he needs a ride to the hospital or detox unit, I’ll give it to him. But if he says he needs a drink, then that is exactly what he needs. Incidentally, I work at a halfway house. I tell them that help is available; I just don’t preach.
[[Those who commented on a different racial mix of panhandlers than my experience, do you get requests for money from well to do looking folks who, apparently, are just walking from the office to a restaurant for lunch and are taking the opportunity to pick up a couple extra bucks? These are the people that really irritate me.]]
That has never happened to me, save the random instances where someone I know is short a buck or two that day and will pay me soon (or has paid for me recently).
[[ A co-worker of mine in Bmore used to pay for his lunch pretty consistently in this manner. I would like to see laws in place that made this kind of thing easily punished with heavy fines. ]]
Or you could (A) grow a spine, or (B) associate with a better class of person.
Anyone comment about the economics of begging? Seems to me I read about some NYU grad students who conducted an experiment at the NYC Port Authority Bus station, a few years back. I seem to remember that a reasonably hard-working panhandler could easily beat out a minimum-wage job holder, with just a few hours/day of this “work”. Moreover, panhandlers could improve their hourly return by a few simple steps: be polite, have a good “sob” story (e.g. “i’m from Indiana, my car broke down,etc.”), and use soap/deodorant. Finally, let us remember that panhandlers don’t pay: state/federal income taxes, SS, health insurance, etc.
So give it a try, all you burnout cases!
Glad to see that my question sparked so much interest.
The suggestion of outlawing invasive, annoying panhandling is a great idea, but it would be difficult to enforce in practice. It’s so much easier for police to immediately ask anyone with a cardboard sign to quit it. Could cities be like airports and define a certain panhandling area, allowing them to force panhandlers in other areas to move along?
I will give to those who I sense are for real. It’s not a cardboard sign, it’s looking into someone’s eyes. Are we such poor judges of people that we feel powerless? We give blindly, or refuse to give simply because we are asked to? Look at the person asking. Ask some questions back. I don’t do it much, but when I do, it is someone who has struck me inside…
Typer
Have you ever looked into the eyes of some of these people? It breaks my heart. Not all panhandlers, by any means. Many are “professional” beggars, who are on the same corner everyday (there’s one guy here in San Francisco who has a sign that says “Stranded - need to get back to LA”. He’s been doing this, same spot, same sign, for two years!). These people are usually pretty easy to spot. I also think there should be laws against harassment and aggressiveness by these people. But some of these folks are at the end of their proverbial rope. They have led horrible lives, many served in Vietnam and came back screwed up, most have no self-worth, many are mentally unbalanced, and they are living in the gutter. The fucking gutter, man! And you want to kick them off the street because they asked you for a quarter? No one says you have to give to these people. No one says that you even have to acknowledge that they are there.
Why don’t you show just a hair of human compassion. Or better yet, why don’t you get out of the damn city, go to the suburbs or the country, and pretend to yourself that homelessness doesn’t exist. After all, out of sight, out of mind, right?
I would like to clarify that I did not give the co-worker the money for his lunch. He got it from passersby on the street. I don’t need to grow a spine. I have a perfectly good one. I even refused to pitch in for his farewell lunch (he was fired for consistent lateness and is suing on grounds of racism). You can imagine how that made the blacks in the office treat me. I soon left the company to pursue a better working environment.
I give regularly to charity and volunteer at soup kitchens when I can. I don’t give money to panhandlers.
I still say the best policy is to send the panhandlers to places where they can get the food, shelter, or treatment that they need.
I think that a city that really wanted to stop the panhandling could do a lot toward that by making widely availble a map of the city with all the shelters etc clearly marked. They would pair this with a good advertising campaign giving facts to the population about the extent of the homeless problem etc. and recommendations for how to deal with panhandlers. As with many problems, education seems the best answer.
As far as a hair of human compassion, the ones who break my heart are the ones who have mental problems that make them incapable of finding a shelter. Sometimes they have paranoia or phobias or whatever that makes them incapable of functioning in society. They have no family to help them and they can’t even apply for assistance because they are incapable. These are the ones that slip through the cracks. They need a lot of help. More than I can give. I took one guy down to social services and tried to help him fill out some forms. The person there assured me that he would get counseling and assistance. I went to check on him and was informed he didn’t show up to pick up his check and had disappeared from the shelter. I thought, “Well, of course! He can’t even tie his shoes and you expect him to be able to deal with the processes of government?” I think the social services are so overworked that they have decided to let the ones like him go. I, too, have to let them go because I don’t have the resources to help them. But, it breaks my heart sometimes.
If men had wings,
and bore black feathers,
few of them would be clever enough to be crows.
Restrict panhandling? I’m not sure that would solve anything. Such a law probably would not stop people from begging; it would only make them criminals as well as beggars.
This thread suggests broader questions: Why do people panhandle? And how should a socially responsible person respond?
Some people probably panhandle because it is their only means of subsistence, as matt_mcl suggests. That’s not true of all panhandlers, though. On two occasions in two different countries, I have invited panhandlers to come with me to the grocery store, so that I could buy them whatever food they wanted.
On the first occasion, in Germany, the panhandler repeatedly asked for money as we walked along, while I repeatedly told him that I would give him food instead of money. When he finally realized I was not going to give him any money, he walked away.
On the second occasion, in the United States, the panhandler was a woman who insisted she needed money to buy food for her children. We were across the street from a Dominick’s grocery store. I pointed to the store and said: ‘‘Let’s go there, and I’ll buy you whatever you want.’’ She responded (with a straight face): ‘‘I don’t shop at Dominick’s.’’
In my experience, many panhandlers do not want money for food. Some of them (not all) probably want money for drugs, or for booze. If I give them money, am I not potentially enabling destructive behavior?
So my personal choice is to politely decline to give panhandlers money. I usually look them in the eye and say, ‘‘Sorry,’’ because I don’t want to fall into the habit of treating these people as objects.
I’m curious how other people feel: At that moment when a person holds his or her hand out and asks for money in the street, what is the moral thing to do?
First of all, in general, we have tried to avoid amending the constitution to deal with limited social issues. Occaisionally, an amendment is added to deal with a limited problem, but for the most part, the idea is to save constitutional pronouncement for areas of significant social or legal impact, e.g. voting age, voting gender, how to elect senators, etc.
If we were to try to amend the constitution to allow our society at a given time to deal with ‘unpleasantness’ through narrowly tailored amendments, the thought is that we would end up amending it everytime we turned around, often undoing it later when a different majority of thought gained sway. For a classic example of the pitfalls involved, you might study the history of Prohibition.
As for whether or not it would make society a better place, that is a subjective question. If you can’t stand seeing or being bothered by people who beg, then yes, it would make it a better place. If instead you don’t mind seeing this activity, and understand the social issues that drive them to it, and would miss the diversity they represent, then no, I don’t think it would. Regardless, the threat of opening the Constitution up for attack whenever we don’t like something would be a terrible blow. After all, the whole POINT to the Bill of Rights is to keep us from outlawing or preventing activity that a majority of us don’t like at a given time, when that activity falls into certain classes that the framers felt needed such protection. IMHO.