You guys really need to see the South Park episode on this. It’s awesome. Night of the living homeless.
Panhandlers
- Thread starter LetsGoDuke301
- Start date
Yes, I know, but if we would buy beer with it ourselves, it doesn’t seem like that alone should be the reason we don’t give. It’s not like it’s realistic for them to be saving toward anything.
I've lived in Chicago city limits since 1995 and to this day have never given a dime to a panhandler. I'd rather spend my money on my own drugs, not theirs.
The best are the guys at the highway exits. On one side of the street you've got a guy with a big sign saying how he is homeless father with a daughter who needs medical care blah blah blah. Then, if you happen to find yourself exiting the highway at the same exit but north instead of south there's a different dude on that corner holding up the exact same sign.
All this said, ironically, I'm related to the world's most successful panhandler. My great Aunt Silvia was featured in People magazine in the late 80s because she used to beg for change outside two deli's in LA and as a result of her begging she donated $1,000,000 to the Jewish United Fund.
As my dad said though, if she donated 1 million that means she made $2 million.
The best are the guys at the highway exits. On one side of the street you've got a guy with a big sign saying how he is homeless father with a daughter who needs medical care blah blah blah. Then, if you happen to find yourself exiting the highway at the same exit but north instead of south there's a different dude on that corner holding up the exact same sign.
All this said, ironically, I'm related to the world's most successful panhandler. My great Aunt Silvia was featured in People magazine in the late 80s because she used to beg for change outside two deli's in LA and as a result of her begging she donated $1,000,000 to the Jewish United Fund.
As my dad said though, if she donated 1 million that means she made $2 million.
I’m hesitant about giving money to panhandlers/homeless people because I’ve heard numerous stories of people giving money to panhandlers/homeless people then they saw them get into really expensive cars and drive to really expensive houses and when they confronted the person and asked them why they were panhandling when they have an expensive car and house the response they got was “because I can”.you just never know these days if they really need the money. On a slightly different topic, I remember one time when I was coming out of a pizza place, I was smoking a cigarette when a woman came up to me and asked if she could buy a cigarette from me for a quarter, so I was like sure and gave her a cigarette and she gave me some change. I didn’t really pay any attention to the change she gave me, I just stuck it in my pocket but after I got in the car I realized that instead of giving me a quarter/25 cents, she had actually given me 2 frigging pennies.
But...but.... but no one would ever fake it to get free money!
@Dattier
Hmmm. Lectures others about why they don’t give money to panhandlers but doesn’t give his reasons why he doesn’t.
This is so Dattier of you.
I never give the extra dollar. I like to be able to write off my charitable donations, not let a corporation do it for me.
I almost always say yes. There's no way the dollars I add here an there add up to more than $20 a year, so I wouldn't bother trying to write them off. But, if you were so inclined, you can still write-off those donations in most cases. All you need for proof is the itemized receipt, which most stores give you, rather than a summarized total with no line items. Though, unless you're writing off thousands of dollars, it's unlikely the IRS is going to take a second look at your cumulative dollar donations at CVS, or wherever.
I should have expanded. I donate much more than a dollar to charities and I prefer to know who I'm donating to not some generic "help kids learn to read" program where I have no idea how they actually utilize their funding.
And while you can apparently still deduct it (honestly news to me), who is gonna keep a $1 receipt to itemize?
I wouldn't imagine anybody keeps the receipts, but I also wouldn't imagine the IRS has ever looked into $20 donation claims. When I've given a dollar, it's always been at store chains, so the charity is always clearly identified by name, and usually a big one. If you're at a mom-and-pop store and they ask you to give a dollar to "help kids read gooder and book learn" yeah, of course don't give them the dollar.
Me and my older brother were a good bit older when our father disappeared. We were old enough to know we had to grow up faster than the average kid. I had someone kick my ass when I messed up and I learned that working hard was the only way to get ahead. Unfortunately my little brother and sister were always too hard headed to take advice and got tangled up with the wrong crowd. And that is easy to do in Durham when you are young. I blame their upbringing because they didn't really have one.
My brother is a drug user. I don't know if he falls into the category of a drug addict or not. But I suppose that's not important to the discussion. My brother does not suffer from anything that you listed. He suffers from being an entitled prick. He is lazy and doesn't think he should have to take care of himself. All of that said, we would still take him into our home if he was serious about bettering his life.
I was specific about the type of panhandlers I was talking about. I absolutely sympathize with homeless and disabled vets. Those are people who aren't fully capable of finding a job. And they are the ones we need to take care of and I wouldn't be skeptical of giving money to.
My job does not skew my perception of this. My life has been surrounded by this. You should not question my empathy seeing how you lack awareness of what I do with my life, in and out of work.
Thank you.
I gave a homeless person the cardboard box from my 65” TV. Does that count?
Its usually at a drive through (only time I eat fast food, not gonna wait in line for shitty food) that I see it, and they just ask me over the speaker. Immediate "no thanks" from me.
Interesting. I don't think I've ever been asked to donate at a drive-thru. I wonder if it's a regional thing.
Ohio here, so maybe. I don't remember it ever happening back in Lexington now that I think about it.
I just hand out business cards, tell them to call and put in an application. That usually scares em off.
Good clarification. I think it makes it more difficult to encourage charity over cynicism when we include them all in one conversation, regardless of how specific we try to be.
I didn't mean it as a dig. There are circumstances in our lives -- both our upbringing and our day-to-day -- that make it easier or harder to empathize. Working in public education has made me a bigger advocate of the marginalized than I might have been otherwise, for example. It's also made me accustomed to being the only authority in the room. Both of those --learned behavior, but second nature -- are frequently on display here.
I would assume it is like any other charity. The money goes to x charity and they spend it in certain ways. There is obviously some overhead involved but different ones give different percentages to various aspects of whatever cause they represent. There are sites where you can look up various nonprofits.
I am a big fan of things like Food Lion does, where you guy an actual food box that goes to local homeless children and families. We have quite a few good local places that feed and help the homeless around here. We have done some work with them before where we help them build different things to help them store food and stuff like that.
I was asking more about the dollar things at normal stores. Hypothetical: Rite Aid has a $1 jar thing for the American Red Cross. I assume the money collected goes to the ARC. However, who gets the tax break on the contribution? Does Rite Aid claim it? Do I get to claim it?
The rest of my question is really more just a cynical observation about companies generally. I assume that if their tip jars get $2m/year, they do not donate $2m/year that they otherwise might have. In other words, I just assume that Rite Aid will take the credit for what is otherwise my contribution. Whether they can also get the tax break, I have no idea.
While they get a tax break for it, it just offsets the dollar you have given them (they have to count it as income until they donate it). They don't come out ahead on the deal. The original owner of the dollar can not claim it in that instance, was my thought prior to this thread. Perhaps I'm wrong based on some above comments.
Good point, thanks. So maybe they just sort of quarantine the money and act as a pass-through after all, eschew the tax break and take the goodwill.
