Giving Money to the Poor and Helping the Poor -- Two Entirely Different Things
Do you give money to panhandlers? Youre not doing them any favors! Putting money in a beggar's cup is possibly the WORST way to help the poor. by Richard in Japan
(conservative)
Monday, September 19, 2011
Imagine five extra dollars.
Imagine finding a five-dollar bill in the street, or reaching into a pocket and pulling out five dollars you didn’t know you had. Imagine winning five dollars in a lottery, or a friend paying back a loan you had long since written off and forgotten.
Then imagine deciding, in a fit of generosity, to share your good fortune with the destitute. What would be the best way to go about it? How could you get the maximum benefit for your good deed?
Many years ago I heard a motivational speaker give some very bad advice on this very topic. His name was Michael Josephson, of the Character Counts organization. The Armed Forces Network in Japan often runs his radio spots as a public service, and I usually agree with his brand of tough-love morality.
However, on this occasion he completely missed the mark. He resolved on-air to carry extra money so he could give it to the roadside panhandlers he met every day, and urged his listeners to do the same.
There’s so much wrong with that I don’t know where to start. This is clearly the second-WORST way to help the poor. By any objective measure, putting the five dollars in a beggar’s cup is even less helpful than keeping the money for yourself.
For the sake of this discussion, let’s stipulate a best-case scenario: the target of your charity is genuinely needy, not a con artist running a scam on the gullible; and he’s genuinely hungry, not collecting to buy booze or drugs. What does he do with your gift?
Let’s say he walks into the nearest fastfood restaurant, gets a sandwich and fries, maybe has enough left over for a hot coffee. Just like that, the five dollars is gone. In a few hours he’ll be hungry again, back out on the street and waiting for someone else to share the wealth.
Having no money (never been there myself, but I’ve come close) is lousy, but that’s not his real problem. Being hungry and cold and dressed in rags; none of these is his real problem. His real problem is living out on the street like a stray dog, begging for scraps. By giving him money, you haven’t solved any of his problems; you merely treated one of his symptoms. What’s worse, you have now reinforced this man’s belief that the answer to his difficulties is generous people like yourself. You’ve trained him to be helpless.
I honestly believe that putting money into the hand of beggars is cruel. You might as well be saying to them "I approve of your life on the street, and I'm willing to pay to maintain it. This money is my way of encouraging you to remain here, living like a rat in the gutter."
In fact, you should say this out loud each and every time put money in a panhandler’s cup: "It’s obvious you will never be able to enjoy the kind of lifestyle I insist on for myself and my loved ones, and I'm okay with that. If you're still here the next time I see you, I'll continue to rob you of your humanity, five dollars at a time."
I have no illusions of changing many minds by writing this essay. Those who hand out alms are far too addicted to the warm and fuzzy glow it provides, and those convinced of their moral superiority are seldom able to recognize themselves as villains.
So if that’s the second-worst use of five dollars, what’s the worst? A liberal might suggest popping it in an envelope, sending it to Washington, and letting the government spend it for you. After all, no matter how high the Democrats set your taxes, there’s no law that you can’t send the Treasury more than that. What would be the fate of your five dollars -- again, best-case scenario --in the hands of a federal bureaucrat?
It might go for paperclips.
Or maybe help to pay the light bill.
More likely, a government junket or fact-finding mission by over-educated paper-pushers who care about the plight of the homeless to the full extent required by law. If even one of the five dollars actually gets spent on an actual poor person, consider him lucky.
Just as in the first example, what makes things worse is the attitude this strategy engenders: those who look to the government for solutions tend to adopt an "I-gave-at-the-office" mentality. Hardly surprising, for people who believe that taxation is the natural state for income. Many studies have shown that liberals give less to charity than their conservative neighbors. Hardly surprising, for people who see nothing funny about the sentence "I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you." The rest of us know that if you want charity done right, like any important job, you have to do it yourself.
What, then, is an efficient and effective use of that five dollars?
You can put that same five dollars into the poorbox at church. If you're not religious, you can contribute to any of the charities doing fine work with the poor, like United Way or the Salvation Army. Most cities have privately-run soup kitchens or homeless shelters that would be happy to take the money off your hands. Better yet, contribute the money AND volunteer your time. Then you can watch your five dollars being spent by people who really know where and how to shop.
They’ll take your five dollars and buy several loaves of bread.
Or they’ll buy vegetables and make soup.
You’ll have enough to feed a whole room full of homeless.
And while you have them in that room, you can try to convince them not to go back out on the street. Sleep tonight in a bed. In the morning, get a shower, and a clean set of clothes. Maybe a haircut. See a doctor for the first time in years.
If necessary, psychiatric or substance abuse counseling. If possible, job training and placement. It could be a window to someday not being homeless anymore.
There are many fine charities with the goal of getting indigent people off the street, giving them warm meals, medical attention, clean clothes and dignity. Unfortunately, very often the homeless won't go in, or if they do go in they won't stay, because they know that there are always well-meaning people who pass by on the sidewalk and give them money.
If you think about it, it’s a great business plan: Stand on the street with outstretched palm until enough investors come by. It keeps millions of beggars around the world in business. But assuming you care about your fellow man, and want what is best for them, why would you support an industry designed to keep people out on the street like so many wild animals?
A human being should sleep in a bed, not a doorway.
A human being should eat at a table, not a garbage can.
I think they are capable of so much more than that. I think that even if they can't get job training and earn a living, they can still live under a roof, healthy and clean. If they don’t, blame the people who sponsor their life out on the streets. If you ever put money into the cup of a beggar again, I’m talking about you.
From now on, please contribute that money instead to a charity of your choice. You'll get the same warm feeling that you're helping those in need, but you'll also know that your money will go toward getting poor people off the street, not keeping them there.
Sometimes I take a bag of bread crumbs to the park to feed the pigeons. I love holding the bread on my outstretched palm, for the braver pigeons to come and take. From the pigeons' point of view, it’s probably as good as life gets: living in nature, but having a nice person come by with food.
That's no way for a human being to live. Please don't treat the poor the way I treat pigeons.
(c) Kublai Khan Unlimited 2011.
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