Don't be Naive - Giving Money to Beggers

I spend a lot of time criticizing SJWs, but I'm actually fairly left-wing myself. I'd even say that by many measures I'm a bleeding heart liberal. However, a lot of people on the Left let our bleeding hearts get in the way of all reason.

I once was the type of person to give money to anyone who came around begging for money. When somebody came into the Starbucks were I was working (stereotypical I know), I would give them a dollar or two. But no more - I learned a couple of important lessons along the way.

First is the obvious one that a lot of people begging are not legitimately poor. I knew this, but I didn't realize just how many are not really poor. A jaded older man explained to me how he suffered financially and got to know a lot of people who were actually poor during that time in his life. Most poor people hate those who go around begging because they give actual needy people a bad name. A local politican also sent out an email about the rise in begging behavior, and how most of it was not legitimate.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2285423/Meet-man-makes-100K-year-begging-pretending-mentally-handicapped.html

This was the first step to helping wake me up about how people take advantage of charity. But even then, I felt uncomfortable saying now. "What if this person is one who really needs it". Then I began to observe how every beggar had some tragic story. Their kid was starving. They were pregnant. Their unseen wife was pregnant. They had an injury. Somehow none of them were just people who had been layed off from their jobs or something like that. Why would that be? It's because there are real services for such people. They can really get help from legitimate organizations because they can show hardship. Most of these beggars can't.

I want to add a caveat here - there are plenty of people who really need help. If you see a homeless person sleeping on a bench in the city at night, giving them money is a great thing to do. They clearly really need it. Trust me, none of these fakers have the dedication to do much more than carry their kid around while carrying a note card about their "struggle". They aren't sleeping outside at night. By all means, please donate to charities that help genuinely needy people. Here is a good place to check which charities are legitimate: https://www.charitynavigator.org/

Then one day a man came into the Starbucks who really caught my attention. He had a card, it looked like a passport or driver's license, from Romania that he showed everyone while begging. That caught my attention because that obviously has nothing to do with whether he needs money or not. The next day, I saw him with his family in another shopping center. They were getting out of their $50,000 SUV.

By now I am thoroughly woke to how much of a scam most begging is. This post was motivated by two things: A desire to let my fellow bleeding heart libs know the truth, and something I witnessed today.

Today, a beggar came into a Starbucks, again. This time nobody gave him money, and I was really proud of everyone. By not giving him money we discourage this bad behavior. However, at the last minute a few people walked in and got in line. One of them fell for it, and agreed to buy him whatever food he wanted. He, of course, picked out two of the most expensive items. These were fancy ham and cheese platters, which provide nearly no nutrition. The meat comes from some place in Italy, and there is hardly any of it in the container. It is a luxury item that I once bought when I had a free item voucher. They normally cost about $7. He could have picked cheaper items that actually would be a full meal. He also picked out a bag of some candy item, which is also among the most expensive items in the store.

It came out to around $20. Imagine if that money had gone to a better cause. And that's just one person on one day. Panhandlers take thousands of dollars that could have gone to genuinely needy people over the course of a year, and sometimes even just a month.

I get the argument that poor people deserve to have a nice meal once in a while, but as somebody who was poor myself for a long time, I would never have done this. I would have picked out an actual meal if I were in need. If you are hungry because you can't afford food, you would naturally get as much food as possible.

Friends, don't let your bleeding heart get in the way of reason, especially when there are great charities to donate to out there.