Beggars (split from Random Rants)

[Commodore]

Because of course you have no minimum tax threshold and no possible way of knowing if you even qualify to pay that year or not.

Even if you don't have to pay, you still have to report the income to the IRS.

 

[Lohrenswald]

They present themselves as homeless or otherwise unfortunate, when they are anything but.

This has never ever happened

Or, as it is here in Cincinnati, they beg for money saying they need food, and then they turn around and use the money to buy drugs.

for addicts, drugs is a neccesity
if an addict resorts to begging, it means he has no other option left

Not to mention, I doubt any beggar, legitimate or not, is reporting that income to the IRS. So in that sense, all beggars are scamming the government out of tax revenue.

look
that really really doesn't matter

 

[Snerk]

Long time drug addicts do have other options. They usually include thievery, robbery and prostitution. I'd prefer begging as a way of supporting their addiction by far.

 

[Commodore]

This has never ever happened

Yes, it has. Hell, in that local news report I talked about earlier, they followed some woman who claimed to be homeless back to her house. And before you say anything, yes they did confirm that she was the owner of the house.

EDIT: The fact that you say it has never, ever happened is a pretty clear indicator of how woefully uninformed you are on the issue. And you are pretty much just developing your opinions on the matter based on whatever position gives you the biggest "warm and fuzzy".

for addicts, drugs is a neccesity
if an addict resorts to begging, it means he has no other option left

Are you serious right now? So being an addict give them the right to lie to people in order to scam money out of them? Just because an addict sees drugs as a necessity doesn't make it so.

look
that really really doesn't matter

Just because you say it, doesn't make it so. You are going to have to explain how it doesn't matter. Because I can think of some reasons why it does matter.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Yes, it has. Hell, in that local news report I talked about earlier, they followed some woman who claimed to be homeless back to her house. And before you say anything, yes they did confirm that she was the owner of the house.

owning a house = not possibly in need of help
thanks for clearing that up

EDIT: The fact that you say it has never, ever happened is a pretty clear indicator of how woefully uninformed you are on the issue. And you are pretty much just developing your opinions on the matter based on whatever position gives you the biggest "warm and fuzzy".

why would anyone spend their times on the street, degrading themself, to maybe get a tiny amount of money they don't need

Are you serious right now? So being an addict give them the right to lie to people in order to scam money out of them? Just because an addict sees drugs as a necessity doesn't make it so.

yes sometimes it is right to lie

Just because you say it, doesn't make it so. You are going to have to explain how it doesn't matter. Because I can think of some reasons why it does matter.

tell my why the state is more important than human beings

 

[Commodore]

owning a house = not possibly in need of help
thanks for clearing that up

But why not be honest and just say she's in need of help? Why tell people she's homeless? Oh yeah, because she's a scammer. Oh and by the way, after that story aired, an investigation was done on her for tax evasion and authorities found around $100,000 in her house from begging that she did not report to the IRS. Yeah, she was really in dire financial need.

why would anyone spend their times on the street, degrading themself, to maybe get a tiny amount of money they don't need

You really don't understand people, do you?

yes sometimes it is right to lie

Agreed. This isn't one of those times. Lying to get money is more or less thievery.

tell my why the state is more important than human beings

Because by denying the state tax revenue, you make it harder for them to help citizens in need, like the homeless. They can't provide social services to anyone if they don't have the money to pay for it.

EDIT: And because the state protects me and provides me with an environment in which I can pursue and advance my own interest. Some random bum on the street doesn't provide me with anything.

Comparing your posting style in this discussion to your other posts is starting to make me think you are trolling right now. Or, at the very least, you are not expressing your true beliefs on the matter. So unless you are willing to start taking this discussion seriously, there's no point in responding to you anymore.

 

[Arakhor]

You really don't understand people, do you?

I'm fairly certain that people do not beg on a regular basis for money that they don't need, whether that need is prompted by food, drugs or something else.

Yes, there will occasionally be scam-artists out there, but the low frequency of such an occurrence hardly merits the poster that prompted this discussion.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Mods: will someone move this in a separate topic?

 

[azzaman333]

why would anyone spend their times on the street, degrading themself, to maybe get a tiny amount of money they don't needs

It can be very profitable if you get a good spot.

Well I'm not familiar with any statistics on the matter so I'll be careful in saying what's fact and what's not. But from a general fellow human point of view I find it appalling to generally advise people not to be charitable to people living on the street due to a possibility of potential scammery.

Regardless of whether there are scammers begging or not, I'm not giving a beggar my money. Just pointing out that unfortunately there are people who pretend to be homeless to prey on the goodwill of others to make a quick buck at the expense of those who genuinely need it.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Mods: will someone move this in a separate topic?

why did you do this

mods please remove the smiley-thing next to the thred title

I'll respond to things posted later

 

[Bootstoots]

Removed angry face.

 

[Snerk]

There's a not insignificant number of beggars who do it as a way to make money without legitimately needing to do it.

Do you have a credible source for this claim? The poster in the OP sure don't offer any. Just an absurd statement that "beggars are not what they seem" and then leaves it at that with a propaganda picture of some evil looking beggar.

It can be very profitable if you get a good spot.


Regardless of whether there are scammers begging or not, I'm not giving a beggar my money. Just pointing out that unfortunately there are people who pretend to be homeless to prey on the goodwill of others to make a quick buck at the expense of those who genuinely need it.

None of this is particularly relevant to the discussion raised here. What you do with your money is up to you. Saying that a significant portion of those begging for money are imposing as something they aren't, is a claim where the burden of evidence resides heavily on anybody making such a claim.

What one local news channel at some point found out about one lady is also irrelevant.

And trying to raise tax evasion among beggars as any argument in this discussion falls on it's own weight and perusing that chain of thought would be a complete derail (derailing the derail, as it where).

 

[Borachio]

It's a difficult one.

I remember giving some money (a very small amount like 50p - it was a long time ago, when I was 18) to an old derelict. Someone, who I presumed was his son about my age, but was dressed in the uniform way of derelicts in that particular city, came up and said in a slightly angry tone of voice: "Don't give him any money, he'll only spend it on drink".

I was at a loss what to do. The old man seemed content to get it, and I could hardly ask for it back.

But what does one do in general? Give money when asked because you never know whether or not it may turn someone's life around (probably an unrealistic hope)? Bluntly refuse anything to anyone - because that only perpetuates a person's misery? Or insist on taking someone along so you can buy them a meal?

Oh, and btw, isn't begging an illegal activity in most jurisdictions?

 

[Commodore]

What one local news channel at some point found out about one lady is also irrelevant.

To clarify, it wasn't just the one lady. They interviewed about 10 beggars and everyone of them was a scammer in some way. Now, I recognize that not all beggars everywhere are scammers. I believe I even said in one of my earlier posts that how many scammers are present in the "beggar scene" is different from location to location. In Cincinnati, there are a lot of scammers, but I fully recognize that the way it is in Cincinnati is not how it is everywhere else.

 

[Snerk]

Fair enough. But I'm sure you see that it's very hard to lend much credibility to a statement saying that there are many scammers posing as beggars in Cincinnati if you don't provide a source as well.

 

[Commodore]

Fair enough. But I'm sure you see that it's very hard to lend much credibility to a statement saying that there are many scammers posing as beggars in Cincinnati if you don't provide a source as well.

I can look for something, but it won't be that news report. It was from over a year ago and it was on tv, so it's not like I recorded it or anything.

EDIT: Holy crap, I found the news report. It doesn't have the lady I referred to though, but it does report on the growing number of begging scammers:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/i-team-one-third-of-panhandling-arrests-are-young-adults

Where Does Your Dollar Go?

Shane Wright, 40, spends most days begging at the corner of Eden Park Drive and I-71.

Wright said he was a roofer who injured himself in a fall about three years ago. He said he now lives on the streets, feeding a heroin addiction.

Shane Wright claims he is a homeless veteran.

“A lot of people know what they're giving us the money for, but they don't care because the ones who give us the money, to be honest, give out of religion,” he said. “The Bible tells you to give without judgment."

Wright said most panhandlers aren’t honest. Some, he said, even pretend to be homeless.

His cardboard sign, decorated with smiley faces, reads: “Homeless vet. Please help. God bless.”

Wright claims he served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1993 to 1996, but the I-Team uncovered the Marine Corps Manpower and Support Branch in Washington D.C. has no record of his service.

Wright isn't alone in his dishonesty.

 

[NovaKart]

I think there's probably a lot of both, people who are really desperate and people who are taking advantage. However I doubt there are many people who are not at least poor who are begging. I've heard about women here who rent babies to get more money. You also see kids begging and I wonder if they have some adult the money goes to.

What really annoys me is when beggars violate your space like grab on to you. Child beggars do that sometimes but they normally avoid me, maybe I look more intimidating, but I also try to steer clear of them.

In Erbil, the capital here, they actually started arresting beggars and taking them to refugee centers. I am sympathetic to some degree so I'm not saying this is the right decision. Most of them were Syrians.

 

[Commodore]

I think there's probably a lot of both, people who are really desperate and people who are taking advantage. However I doubt there are many people who are not at least poor who are begging. I've heard about women here who rent babies to get more money. You also see kids begging and I wonder if they have some adult the money goes to.

What really annoys me is when beggars violate your space like grab on to you. Child beggars do that sometimes but they normally avoid me, maybe I look more intimidating, but I also try to steer clear of them.

In Erbil, the capital here, they actually started arresting beggars and taking them to refugee centers. I am sympathetic to some degree so I'm not saying this is the right decision. Most of them were Syrians.

Yeah, they've started arresting beggars here too in an attempt to drive them out of the city. They are also hoping to get a few of them to rat out their heroin dealers, since a lot of them are heroin addicts and heroin is becoming somewhat of a problem in Cincinnati. Cincinnati Police were especially hard on the beggars during the MLB All-Star Game that was held here last year. City Council and the mayor wanted to put on a good face for the rest of the nation and didn't want all the tourists coming in to get harassed by beggars.

 

[NovaKart]

My mother lives in a sort of small town in North Carolina and they've had a big problem with heroin too. I can't remember the number but it was a large number of deaths from overdoses in a rather short space of time. People think it's because the government made it harder to get addictive prescription meds and it's harder to measure your dosage with heroin than pills. So the government action really just resulted in more deaths.

I had to edit an article about the begging in Erbil and I was stumped on what word to use. I thought begging was a more negative word that you wouldn't see as much in the news so I used panhandling but I looked it up later and it said panhandling is an Americanism and perhaps too colloquial for an international news site, although a google search did show a number of American papers using it.

 

[Snerk]

EDIT: Holy crap, I found the news report. It doesn't have the lady I referred to though, but it does report on the growing number of begging scammers:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/i-team/i-team-one-third-of-panhandling-arrests-are-young-adults

Good find. I think the story is interesting enough, though I'd prefer some hard statistics to go with their angle on begging. But yeah I think it's one of the many aspects of poverty that warrants some attention too. Don't think it at any means justifies putting up a poster like the one in OP though.

Yeah, they've started arresting beggars here too in an attempt to drive them out of the city.

Did they say what they wanted to achieve with that? Perhaps just an out of sight out of mind situation?