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I don't give money to panhandlers, but I do help support the poor. Its called taxes. In most cases, my practice is to send them to the social service agencies or Salvation Army. We have a whole network of agencies ready to help these people and that is where they should go. Our govt. also helps people in need. They can then determine what, if any services and aid are appropriate. They can also limit their aid to what is actually needed. I think this helps reduce panhandling and forces the beggars to at least be put on a budget. If you like panhandlers, then give them more money, because you will then get more of them.
Almost no one on this thread posts what for me is most important speaking to this subject: YOUR LOCATION.
I can't drop into Calgary for sixty seconds without being panhandled. It's become a culture. I was down in LA and was panhandled once in four weeks, by a guy my age after I started the conversation.\
Vancouver, BC is really bad as crack is a few bucks, so panhandling works instead of hooking. But in Alberta it's dangerous; lots of aggression over there and I'm not usually alone. Pandhandlers in Calgary are thugs; watch your back; they've had numerous incidents downtown where you get assaulted from behind, and C-Train police are nowhere to be found.
Every city is different, but the culture of brain dead is the same.
Interesting. As already noted, I work in lower Manhattan. You can't categorize all the panhandlers into one group, but there is definitely a subculture within the panhandling world of young white people, mostly from places other than New York City, who are heroin addicts. You see them setting up sometimes early in the morning as you are going to work. They often use dogs--I've seen cats, too, but it's mostly dogs--as part of the ploy to get sympathy. They trade the animals amongst themselves. I'll seen a guy with a dog in the morning working the morning commuters near the PATH station, and later that day while walking at lunchtime I'll see a girl with the same dog down near Bowling Green where the tourists are getting their pictures taken with the bull. It's this whole underground of panhandling expertise. Sad, but also somewhat fascinating when you think about it.
In addition to the aforementioned, there are homeless veterans and the mentally ill, and there are others who are not ill but just for some reason landed on the streets and find it easier to survive there than in the dangerous shelter system. The population of homeless in NYC is almost 60,000, including families in shelters.
I don't give money to panhandlers, but I do help support the poor. Its called taxes. In most cases, my practice is to send them to the social service agencies or Salvation Army. We have a whole network of agencies ready to help these people and that is where they should go. Our govt. also helps people in need. They can then determine what, if any services and aid are appropriate. They can also limit their aid to what is actually needed. I think this helps reduce panhandling and forces the beggars to at least be put on a budget. If you like panhandlers, then give them more money, because you will then get more of them.
There are so many places where free meals are handed out.
Every day at 12:45 (except Wednesday, not sure why), brown bag lunches are handed out in a little courtyard at the side of Trinity Church at the foot of Wall Street. No one is turned away, even the occasional tourist who wanders in and sees free coffee. Most of the regulars are elderly Cantonese who come down from Chinatown, but there are others, too. Within a block of Trinity at that time are probably at least three to five panhandlers. Food is there for them. They aren't looking for food.
Don't give to panhandlers. Give to the local shelter or soup kitchen.
The homeless need more than soup and an unsafe place to stay. It's good that shelters and kitchens and clinics are out there, but at best they offer short-term support, not long-term answers. Once you're down, it takes time and money to get back up. What are YOU doing to help folks out with that?
As for the system failing, well the US is not set up as welfare state so it is only indirectly responsible for the well being of any of its individual citizens.
That's not actually what it says in the US Constitution nor in our legal traditions.
That's my choice and my outlook. Yours may differ.
Do you believe that among those apt to be reading this thread there is an average intelligence sufficient to the making of the same sorts of distinctions that you have made? Are we in your eyes able or not able to tell when some scammer is trying to rip us off?
We do not live in a world of either devils or angels, and I would bet that most understand that well enough to be careful out there.
Do you believe that among those apt to be reading this thread there is an average intelligence sufficient to the making of the same sorts of distinctions that you have made? Are we in your eyes able or not able to tell when some scammer is trying to rip us off?
We do not live in a world of either devils or angels, and I would bet that most understand that well enough to be careful out there.
??? I have no idea what prompted you to ask that question in response to my post, in which I was responding to someone who was accusing me of not being able to tell the difference between a junkie and a person telling a true story. Or, more accurately, of accusing me of misjudging the fake-story panhandler.
It's not my job to monitor other people's reactions to panhandlers. I have no frikken idea whether someone else is "able or not able to tell when some scammer is trying to rip us off". Never occurred to me to even think about what other people think.
Last edited by Mightyqueen801; 08-29-2015 at 10:46 AM..
They're on welfare and getting the cash benefits too. Also, the Obama phone is now a new blackberry. I was shocked when I overhead a ghetto welfare thug bragging about his free blackberry from Obama.
The people on the streets begging for money are actually making good money, paying no taxes and most drive new cars and park further away. There was an excellent story done on many of them years ago and it was amazing how well they scammed drivers out of cash.
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