I give them money if they entertain me…
*note to self get some cash*

so, i was on my way to work this morning. i ride the bus, and i passed this guy sitting on the curb. i had my head phones on, and couldn't hear his mutterings. i thought he was just saying “hey” as i walked by, and i took out my head phones as to not be a rude ass and say “hello” in kind.

turns out the guy was just asking me for money. he was dirty and desheveled. i told him, “hey man, all i have is bus fare, and i'm on my way to work.”
he replied, “work? why work?”
“excuse me?”
“why work man? it's a waste of time.”
i slowed my pace. turned to him and said, “i have bills to pay. and i like having money for food and air conditioning and heat. and i also have money to buy beer.”
“aw man, i'm just trying to buy some beer.”
i wave goodbye and continue on my way…..

keep in mind this was before 10 am. not to point fingers, but his homelessness is by choice so that he can wake up from his grass bed and spare enough money to buy beer and spend the day f***ed up. he would rather spend his days leisurely lounging about drinking alcohol and pacing street corners for money than doing anything else with his life. that is the path he chose. he is the one who would rather spend his time drinking or scrounging change for the next drink and sleeping under the stars.

me personally, i want more of my life. i enjoy having a record collection and collecting g.i.joes. i like sleeping in a bed with blankets that don't have mites and smell of 89 days worth of BO and puke. i like having somewhere warm to go when the ice forms on the tree limbs. but that is just me. when i was living in my car draped under 3 blankets, fully clothed, in the middle of feb……i wasn't thinking about scoring some change for my next fix. i was thinking “F**K THIS S**T!” so, i fought to better my station. i took positive opportunities to better myself and pulled myself out.

so with my example this morning….no, i don't give money to beggers. all they want is the money to fuel their vices. i'll give food or a beer, but not money. if their lifestyle choice is to panhandle, then, as far as i'm concerned they can go out and earn their money like the rest of society. wash windows. shine shoes. anything aside from holding up a silly cardboard sign.

People who give money to charities for any reason other than taxes are the ones being taken for a ride.
Through the generosity of others I survived starvation and heat exhaustion in Tampa Fl. Summer '78

I'll always donate to the veterans of foreign wars fund raisers, boy scouts, girl scouts, high school teams, people asking everyone they meet for a smoke because they're broke, ran out and need a fix, and people who may be homeless because of poor life choices or their own volition, but I will NOT donate to people who approach me and seem like they're trying to scam me.

For example: About four years ago I was at Wal-Mart with a friend of mine. While we were headed out, the parking lot was kind of empty and I saw some middle aged, reasonably dressed guy headed in our direction. We didn't divert our path because between the two of us (both in the same karate class) we knew we could take the guy.

Guy: Hey man, how you doin?
Me: Pretty good.
Friend: Alright.
Guy: Are you military?
Me: No sir.
Friend: Nope.
Guy: Well see, I'm retired military (actually pulls and shows me his ID) and I'm trying to get enough money to get to the next town to see my daughter in the hospital.
Me: Sorry man, I'm broke.
Friend: (shrugged)
Guy: Well alright, you fellas have a good night.


Six months later: I was headed out from Wal-mart and I see the same guy, though I didn't recognize him right off, and he did catch me a bit more unaware this time BUT:

Guy: Hey man, how you doin?
Me: Pretty good.
Guy: Are you military?

And then it hit me. It was the SAME GUY pulling the SAME PLOY.

Me: No sir.
Guy: Well see, I'm retired military (again, shows me his ID) and I'm trying to get enough money to get to the next town to see my daughter in the hospital.
Me: Sorry man, broke till payday.
Guy: Well alright, you take care.


Just so you know, the next town is an hour's drive away, about 60 miles or so. At that time, $10, hell maybe $5 would have been gas enough to get him there, but it was his initial deal of first trying to appeal to my sense of comraderie and then hit me up for money. Maybe his daughter really was sick in the hospital. I don't know, and I don't really care. If these people really need help they shouldn't approach me like it's a gimmick.

If I EVER meet someone in this town who simply says “I'm homeless, I'm broke and I've made a lot of bad descisions,” I'd probably go to the ATM and give the guy a twenty and buy him a box of MREs to boot.

I absolutely do, whenever I am able. treat people how you would like to be treated in that same situation.

What annoys me are those hippies standing on the side of the street trying to get people to stop so they can go off with some long spiel so they can seduce them into signing up for a direct debit to be taken out of their account every week and donated to some group or other.

NO.
When I give, I give of my choosing when and how much I decide. The government is the only one I'll let tax me. -_-

Besides, if they really believe that much in their cause, why don't they study hard, get a high paying job and then donate almost all their weekly pay to their pet cause?
What unfortunately tends to happen here is that when people get out of uni, they don't feel like working yet so they live off of government benefits for a while. Doing that sort of charity work gets the government off your back so you can take it easy doing that for a while- never mind the hypocrisy inherent in their actions (the government money that funds their benefits is the same pool of money that can also go to help the truly less fortunate, green projects etc), their life is easy and they can justify it to themselves and others that they're doing good. :)

Heh, I know, I almost considered doing that myself when I was taking it easy on government benefits back when I first got out of uni. ;)
Nothing wrong with taking it easy like that, but don't extend it more than you should.

Haha. I love it when I run into the same scammer multiple times, and it's the same story. I got that a lot in my old neighborhood in New Orleans. Eventually I'd actually get to know ‘em and they’d drop the act.

I don't mind giving money, if I have extra, to bums- especially if I know ‘em. But I won’t if they give me some made-up sob story. If they just need it for booze or dope, and say so, then I'm more liable to toss 'em a buck or two.

I'm usually really accommodating with people who ask for money, but I've gotten less and less generous. -_-;

There's a guy near school who begs a lot, and one day I spotted him climbing easily up the hill beside the nearby highway…yes, only when he reached the median did he start tragically limping around! I was all “Gasp, how inconsistent!” XD

My friend's stepdad came back from Mexico City a while back and told us that there was a lady in the subway who was shaking a cup of change with one hand and holding her cellphone with the other. I guess the quality of bum life in Mexico City sounds pretty good, if the bums can afford cellphones and all.

I only give money to buskers in the Underground stations when I'm in London. They have to sign up for shifts to do that and they play music and all, so it's pretty much their paid work. I also regularly give to some charities, and volunteer my time for some places. But I don't give handouts to people on the street. Maybe in an earlier age I would have, but I'm cynical and I think most of those guys are running some kind of scam.

One time I drove through Sonic on my way somewhere, got 2 burgers.

The first one filled me up a bit, and I was planning on eating the second till I saw a guy on the side of the street with a cardboard sign, asking for money. I gave him the burger instead. Soon as he got that he packed up and started walking again.

Most of the time, all they want is food.

whenever I have money in my pockets that isn't more than $5, I'll give it to them, especially if I see a humorous note on the piece of cardboard (once I saw a guy with “need money to buy a present for Angelina Jolie's baby” so I gave him some money), because that shows they haven't lost hope.

And to the people that say “they did that to themselves”, in most cases that's wrong. This is a little off-topic, but once I was discussing with this lady about how people who live in the ghetto's and slumsvilles in New York do NOT have the same chance of going to college as the people that went to my school (which, I hate saying this, but it's a really rich school (the UN is paying for our rent)). She just would not accept that the people where I live are better off than those in Harlem and the Bronx.
Back on topic, that's the same mindset, I don't see any bums in this rich cess-pool where I live, but I see many in the ghettos, coincidence? you tell me.

If I lost my job today, lost my house, lost everything I own, I wouldn't be out on the street begging for money. I have friends and family and neighbors who would gladly take me in until I got back on my feet, as I've done for many of them in the past. People who live on the streets are there because they either burned every bridge they ever had, or because they want to be there, crazy as it may sound. I saw a documentary some time ago about a community of homeless people living in a sewer under New York, and they were distraught when the city finally came down and forced them into housing and paying jobs. They eventually adjusted to their new lives, and looked back with bewilderment at their time on the streets, but during the time they were homeless they loved it and couldn't imagine a more pristine existence.

My perception of homeless people is fueled perhaps more than anything by an experience I had as a young man selling newspapers. One day a homeless woman came and sat next to me, I guess because she saw I was getting business. She had on this bright red apron with some kind of logo on it and one of those red plastic coin receptacles like the ones Santa always carries when he's ringing that bell outside Wal-Mart around Christmas time. And she was asking people for money (“Donations for retarded children!” was her sales pitch, which even then sounded fishy to me). Anyway, as soon as she'd gotten a few bucks, she went across the street and got some donuts and coffee, then came back and collected some more “donations.”

The way I see it, they're all scammers. If they need food, every major city has places where they can go to seek food and board. There are people who can arrange some form of menial employment for them. If they're out there asking people for money, it's not for something they need. It's for booze money, for crack money, for whore money. It's to facilitate them staying on the street and away from productive work as long as is humanly possible. By giving them money, you're just encouraging them to continue with their anti-social lifestyle.

But of course, it's extremely difficult for any human being whose heart isn't made of coal not to want to give something to people who ask them for help, so there's a real dilemma there…

I don't mind giving money to scammers. Everyone has to get by somehow.
I prefer to buy a copy of the Big Issue from the guys selling that though. It's quite a good magazine and those people are actively making an effort to change their lives. :)

I have no cash. So, no.

A gave a bum a bag of fried prawn bread once. Thats as far as my generosity spans.

I give money to people on the street. Also food and car rides. Whatever is handy. Once every four years, I donate to a charity.

Money and food is one thing, but it's probably not such a good idea giving homeless people car rides. Back in my more trusting days, I gave a lift to a nice homeless couple who claimed, believably, to be out-of-work schoolteachers. When I got home later I discovered my wallet was missing and by that time they'd already bought $800 worth of stuff on my debit card. If they've got somewhere they need to be, it's probably a better idea to just give them bus money instead. If you offer transit fare and they insist on a ride anyway, then they're probably up to something shady.

Ok, I know some people have said this but I guess I'll repeat it to voice my own opinion. I don't give money to people who ask for it. I feel that there are enough government agencies, charities, and other places that people can find work, get food, or even stay the night. yes it completely sucks that they are homeless and living in a card board box. To be completely honest it seems like they want a little bit more then what everyone is willing to give them. If they just spend that time looking for a job at an employment agency then chilling on a street corner.

*end mini-rant*

i give it to the ones that actually need it. and i've sat down and shared my lunch with enough poor unlucky folk that have lost everything to tell when one's simply unfortunate and when one is getting payback for being an asshole.

well, most of the time.

Orin J Master
i give it to the ones that actually need it. and i've sat down and shared my lunch with enough poor unlucky folk that have lost everything to tell when one's simply unfortunate and when one is getting payback for being an asshole.

well, most of the time.

I don't know if the people I give stuff to actually need it. I only know that they want it.

It doesn't matter much. If I have it to give and I'm not going to use it for anything, then I'll usually give anybody anything as long as I'm in a good mood.

But if someone asks me for something and I'm not in a good mood, then I'm an ass about it.