On the subject of how much money do panhandlers make:
When I first read that, I thought they were satirically quoting Michael Scott from the office discussing in a deadpan fashion whether he or someone else should look into panhandling and listing the financial aspects of it (if I quit my job how much would I make if I panhandled and sold plasma, etc). Turns out Michael Scott is an actual researcher. It sounded like something Michael Scott from the office would say.
No, Staff Reports are based on Reality, which is usually funnier than fiction. Only if it isn’t do we make it up, but it never is.
Wasn’t there a news story a few decades ago about a well-known legless panhandler in Washington DC -when he died, it turned out he was spending his winters in Florida living a pretty good life on the proceeds of panhandling?
This whole concept sounds like an urban legend to me. “I know somebody who makes $30,000 a year from begging, and he’s not even disabled.” but when pressed for details the story becomes “I once met someone who told me that he asked a bunch of homeless people how much they can make in one day from begging and I took that guy’s answer and multiplied it by 365 and rounded up, but I personally don’t know any beggars.” and then if you go ask the “someone” he says “Oh I didn’t say I did the research myself, I said that when I was in college some other social science students did some research and they told me about it.”
I once ran out of gas money while on a road trip (twenty years ago). I figured I needed about $5 for gas money to be able to get home. I made myself a cardboard sign saying “STRANDED, NEED GAS MONEY” and sat beside the road. After two hours of begging, I had made zero dollars. Finally I ended up selling some jewelry for $5.
Maybe I just don’t have the knack for it. Or maybe begging is a lot harder than it looks.
I saw a documentary about 10 years ago where they filmed a couple of homeless teenagers for a week or so. One turned out to be pregnant and decided to buy a bus ticket back to her home town. IIRC, she wrote on her little cardboard sign that day that she was pregnant and needed $90 for a bus ticket. Five hours later, she had begged just over $40 total, so the film crew chipped in the rest so she could get her bus ticket. Five hours to beg $40, and that’s while telling people she’s pregnant.
Sherlock Holmes once dealt with this issue.
Plasma? Is he taking the magic smoke out of older big TVs, or is he providing outputs to the cold fusion people? [/BrainDerail]
Well, that’s eight bucks an hour in a documentary filmed over a decade ago. Well above minimum wage back then.
But for every guy or gal who has it down to a science and is making a decent living, there are a few thousand who are slowly starving to death.
Blood plasma. You can donate it more frequently than whole blood, so if you’re using blood donations as a source of income…
Never mind. I should have read the article first.
I would have got him mixed up with this Michael Scot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scot
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/earlychurch/oddities_earlychurch.shtml, which would be even weirder. 
In Toronto we had a couple of fraudulent panhandlers exposed by a local newspaper. They were making LOTS of money pretending to be handicapped or destitute. Very much like the Sherlock Holmes story. (Google “Shaky Lady” or “Sticker Lady” Toronto for more info)
They’d beg in the city centre all day and commute to their suburban homes at night to watch their big screen TVs (possibly plasma?).
At some point my son had asked me why I refuse to give money to beggars and I told him about the frauds. I explained that I preferred to buy the beggars food (so they didn’t spend it on booze) or donate money to legitimate charities to help them.
When he was in grade 6, his (bleeding heart) teacher mentioned something about panhandlers and society’s failure and my son mentioned these frauds. The teacher tore a strip off him in front of the class for spreading this “urban legend”. My son came home and told me I “lied” to him and I didn’t know what I was talking about. I found the story and printed it and he brought it in to his teacher the next day. The happy ending was that, to his credit, the teacher apologized to my son in front of the class.
Last note - I have bought beggars a sandwich and coffee at times. One guy was begging in front of a Starbucks and I bought him turkey wrap and a coffee (maybe $9 total). When I handed it to him, he looked at me, told me to fuck-off and threw it in the waste bin. I plucked out the still wrapped wrap and ate it. So it goes…
Maybe there are a few beggars who make six-figure salaries. But, if so, those few would be extreme outliers and not representative of what it’s really like to be homeless.
This reminds me of the so-called “Welfare Queen”, who committed multiple counts of identity theft and fraud, scamming thousands (perhaps millions?) of dollars from the government. Yes, it turned out she was a real person, not a invention of the Republican party. But the fact remains that she was not a representative sample of what people are like who are on welfare. Republicans wanted to smear the entire welfare system by pointing to this criminal. You might as well point to bank robbers and say “See? This is why we should get rid of banks!” They kept playing up the fact that she was on welfare ignoring the part of the story where she was, you know, a scammer, and thief, and a fraud.
The possible existence of a few scam artists doesn’t change the reality of what 99% of homeless people struggle with every day.
But most (if not all) of the other beggars were grateful for the sandwich and coffee, right? You’re just relating a bad reaction you got from ONE guy. And we really don’t know what his situation was and why he reacted negatively to the turkey wrap.
I understand the motivation, I really do. You don’t wanna give cash because you’re afraid they’ll waste the money. But if you give them something they don’t need, then you wasted the money anyway. Imagine a homeless person who starts off the day thinking “I hope I can get $60 today because I’d really like to buy some clean socks, buy a turkey sandwich and a box of granola bars, a bottle of Aspirin, some Bandaids and toothpaste, then pay Steve back that $20 I borrowed from him last week, and buy a bus ticket across town to get to the shelter before all the cots are filled” and then four hours later they’ve received $16.25 and four turkey sandwiches. Then you walk up and wanna give them another turkey sandwich. My point is that you don’t know what the homeless person needs. The one person in the whole world who’s in the best position to know what that person needs and be able to judge what’s a wise purchase is the person themselves. The most versatile gift you can give is cash. But if you can’t bring yourself to give cash, the least you could do is ask what they need before you go buying something for them.
I don’t carry change.
Maimonides said that if you give money to ten beggars, and nine were lying and did not need the money, you have still done a good thing.
Many are equipped to handle paper money. And Maimonides for the win, IMHO.
Thank you, Sir.
A good biography of G. K. Chesterton that includes the story of how he was inspired to create Father Brown will have a story to tell here. But it’s really revolting, so I don’t think I should repeat it.
Um, revolting how? I don’t want to stumble onto something that will have me freaked out for weeks, but I’m still curious.
I’m also curious. I googled Chesterton and Father Brown and found some stuff about how Brown was based on a priest that Chesterton knew and who had once told him that, because of taking confessions, priests were aware of every manner of human depravity. I didn’t find anything more than that.