Also, don’t get caught up in a medical situation that can wipe out your savings, don’t let your employer sell the company out from under you and abolish your job, don’t train for a job that unexpectedly becomes obsolete years later, don’t get stiffed by your insurance company when an emergency happens, don’t get “downsized” right before your retirement benefits kick in, don’t let the property values rise so high you can no longer afford your home, etc.
Are these all part of that “cautionary tale” you tell your kids?
Bingo. Because I’ve had a couple of these things happen (on top of my depression) and if it wasn’t for friends and family who knows where I’d be? Not everyone has the luxury of supportive friends and family. I give when I can and the opportunity presents itself.
Except nothing I posted was meant to be offensive. Even if they disagree with me it still wasn’t meant to offend. If I intended to offend I would’t back away from it, but that was not my intent. They just misunderstood my point.
Which is, while your heart and mind may have noble intentions, what you are doing is having a detrimental effect to the result you actually want to happen. Giving homeless people subsistence takes away any motivation on their own to support themselves and enables them to remain homeless.
Giving beggars money does not help them.
So do I, which is why I do not directly hand cash to beggars. I will sometimes hand out socks.
But I donate and volunteer to help the homeless.
Beggars may- or may not- be in need.
Yes, I will reward buskers. They have a profession, they are entertainers.
A few homeless prefer that lifestyle. Most homeless were one check away from being homeless… then they lost that check. They want a job, a home, etc. Many of these are invisible, since they are often living in cars or couch surfing. Of the rest many have drug or mental illness issues.
Yes, they are not always the same, by any means.
Do you not pay entertainers?
I apologize that I misunderstood. I resolve to next time ask you to amplify so I can get your meaning.
Socks are good, too, likely better than the hat.
I’d imagine that for some homeless people, at some stages of their homelessness, this might be true.
But I’d also imagine that – even setting aside for the moment those who lost housing because of substance abuse and/or mental illness – the journey becomes ever more perilous, ever more insidious, ever more dangerous, ever more surreal, ever more intolerable, ever more Stygian, ever more unhealthy, ever more dispiriting, and ever more lethal over time.
It has to be utterly soul crushing.
ETA: Which, I’d wager, leads formerly non substance-addicted people to substance misuse and addiction.
I’d imagine that experts can basically point to a line on the continuum of the devolution of homelessness, and say, “There. Right there is the line which – once crossed – virtually guarantees a person will never ‘escape’ homelessness without Homeric, focused, sustained extrinsic interventions requiring significant allocation and expense of resources.”
“Motivation” to support oneself in the manner of a ‘conventional life’ becomes dramatically less important when pure biological survival is the mode in which you’ve operated for months and years.
The people with whom I’ve spoken that have spent any length of time clinging by their fingernails to the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs tend to get a look on their faces, when asked about that time, that’s eerily reminiscent of those I’ve known who saw combat in Vietnam.
Complex situations tend to be stubbornly resistant to simple solutions.
I like to think I’m teaching them to be resilient and adaptable. Some things in life wont turn out how they expected. But they have some agency to effect the outcome of their lives based on the choices and decisions they make.
I mean my kids are 8 and 4. They aren’t getting their PhDs in Political Science. I think “do you homework so you don’t end up begging for change beneath the overpass” should suffice for now.
Hypothetical question: Say said busker is singing the most offensive White Power Hate Rap, or “Kill the Police” stuff that was pretty popular a few years back, or Dear God! “You Light Up My Life”! Would you feel obligated to toss a coin in their can? Or what if they just plain SUCK?
Do you pay for entertainment you don’t want? (Lord knows I do! I have DishTV! 2000 channels and only watch maybe 5 of them)
For what it’s worth, I got your point, and I think the analogy was apt. The obvious point of the analogy is that doing something that appears to be compassionate in the immediate circumstances may have longer term detrimental effects. I think people who are suggesting that your analogy implies that people deserve no more compassion than animals are wrong, there’s no way it can sensibly be interpreted that way.
We donate to a lot of charities, usually at year’s end, so we rarely give to panhandlers. There is a fella named William who has the corner near the bakery staked out to sell the local Street Roots newspaper. The usual donation for those papers is $1, but I give him however many ones I have in my pocket or even a fiver. He’s clearly living on the streets, but this is his income source for survival. I’m usually happy to throw a bit in a busker’s guitar case, as well.
It’s also well known that most panhandlers are not trying to support children or dogs or whatever the sign says; it’s more likely that they’re supporting their drug habits or working for a Fagan. There was a guy who hung out by the grocery store for awhile who had a sign proclaiming that it was his birthday. That went on for a couple of months. 
That has the rather unfortunate implication that the people who are beggin for change beneath the overpass are there because they failed to do their homework, or some similar thing entirely in their control.
I’m going to have to disagree with this a little.
Some homeless people are mentally ill and “choose” to be homeless. Some might even be of sound mind and choose to be homeless.
But refusing to go to a shelter is not “choosing” to be homeless. They’re still homeless, and in this case appear to be sleeping on the streets. There are problems with shelters (overcrowding, having to deal with other homeless, religion, etc) although there are certainly benefits to staying there compared to staying on the streets.
There’s also the reverse perspective. Giving to beggars can be a way to make the giver feel better about themselves without doing anything that would really address the problem.
I think the same could be said about me casting my vote at the proverbial ballot box (or myriad other things).
But there really is the old adage, “Better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”
And while my direct contributions to individuals on the street are pretty few, I tend to support the organizations whose missions it is to help people get back on their feet.
Sometimes, though, it doesn’t feel like an either/or to me.
And maybe those who are steadfastly unwilling to directly help those who are obviously less fortunate are also doing it to make themselves feel better, since they feel – equally passionately – that their way is the way to be helpful.
Voting or lighting a candle are small but unambiguously positive contributions. I don’t see how are either of these an apt analogy when the hypothesis is that giving money directly to beggars is detrimental in the long run. And I don’t think we even need to prove that questionable hypothesis if we can defend the much weaker claim: if you want to give $X, don’t give it to beggars that you randomly happen to encounter, if you can afford to donate $X there are better ways to help the homeless.
I don’t think it’s always about ‘the long run.’ This is why I say that, for me, it isn’t always an either-or.
I see some people in pretty frightful physical condition on my adventures. It’s not my perception that they’re taking advantage of social services or the things that charities can give them. They may not qualify. They may be too messed up (in any number of ways) to get that help.
In some cases, they’re near starving or near freezing. My area gets mighty cold at night, in the winter, and some of these people have only blankets and tattered tents.
Switching gears, and invoking an analogy: I might support the local animal shelter, but I might also give food to an emaciated dog that I keep seeing.
Not every dog lives long enough to be rescued by an organization. Not every homeless person survives the cold winter’s night.
Nobody is suggesting that there is any moral justification for not helping something at immediate risk of death, especially when you are the only person likely to be able to help them. But that’s a straw man. 99.9% of giving to beggars does not take place under such extreme circumstances.