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"The homeless industry"?
Didn't you know? They're assembled in factories.
Big Homeless
Yeah the industry has been in the shit since credit and debit cards. A homeless guy with a chip and pin device to get donations is completely off-message for the brand
So apparently around Los Angeles there's a supposed begging "cartel", wherein some of the folks who beg at stoplights and freeway off ramps are actually working for an organized ring. The way it was explained was that this group takes the lionshare of their donations and offer protection, food, and safe sleeping areas. I don't know how true this is, but I've heard it from quite a few unrelated people, one of which being a cop, so either there's some truth to it or it's a very elaborate hoax to get people to stop giving beggars money.
That sounds like an urban legend. The Sherlock Holmes story “The Man With the Twisted Lip” includes a wealthy man who had made his money by begging. The “beggar king” trope goes back further than that, and as far as I can tell it’s just a comfortable fiction to excuse society’s failure to care for its most vulnerable members.
It does happen in some third world countries. Not sure for LA though.
In India, this kind of thing is common, especially when the beggars are children.
One of the story arcs of Slumdog Millionaire.
Not even homeless people can escape landlords
Pretty sure that it is one of those things that does happen rarely, but people tend to assume everyone is doing it as an excuse to dismiss the homeless problem.
This is insane peak capitalism at work. Paying "donations" to an organized group to provide food and shelter is literally just recreating what the government should be doing with taxes. If this cartel is real, it's just criminalized socialism.
As long as they're not hurting anyone, I'm not against it, but that's just such a batshit crazy concept that that's where we're at with the world.
I know in my city I've seen a "homeless" guy beg for money, with a cardboard sign. Then goes and gets into his sports car and drives off.
And that got me thinking. Most people who give, don't give a dollar. They give a few dollars. So lets just say they get about $40 in an hour.
That's $40 untaxed. And there's nothing stopping them from just doing this all day. Remember, I'm not talking about actual homeless people. I'm talking about scam beggers.
Imagine doing $40 an hour average, for 10 hours, every day, for doing nothing. Set your own schedule. Never gotta worry about being late. Can't get fired. Practically zero costs to start this business. You need a piece of cardboard, a marker, and MAYBE a folding chair.
So yeah. I'd say it's an industry. An unregulated, scam, borderline illegal industry.
Studies suggest this is an extreme minority, and stories like yours - while yours might be true (and be fair to me here, we're just two usernames, we don't know each other's motives and biases), it's often used to push reasons to defund homeless shelters and criminalize being poor.
Even if you have seen a homeless person (or imposter) do something wrong, it might be worth considering that being homeless is very difficult and often caused by pre-existing medical conditions or institutionalized discrimination.
Which is crazy, because those types wouldn't live in a homeless shelter
well of course not, they all have sports cars etc etc
This is quite a take.
The weather, constant UV exposure, car fumes and tire particles, people shouting abuse and throwing shit sounds like awesome self-employment. Remember, if you look at all comfortable you don't fit the narrative.
That isn't even worth $40 an hour and I seriously doubt that figure, people don't even like making eye contact with folks standing on roadsides and they don't carry cash.
Do you have anything supporting this?
Yes, he's heard that from a reliable source on facebook and/or his drunk buddy.
His buddy is also able to make up any statistic he could need right on the spot.
I know in my city I’ve seen a “homeless” guy beg for money, with a cardboard sign. Then goes and gets into his sports car and drives off.
Yeah? You've seen it? You saw him begging and saw him get in a luxury car and drive away? He parked right beside where he was begging?
I call bullshit.
Yeah. I saw him begging for 3 weeks. Then one day he walked across the street to the parking lot, and got in a red sports car.
Well, it's impossible for anyone who owns a red sports car to become homeless, so he must have been lying.
Well, these sports cars usually sell for $100,000+. If he was homeless, he could sell the car, buy a house, and still have anywhere from 5k to 40k leftover depending on the house.
Sure, the car is red, so it must sell for $100k.
It's on the same level as the rest of your post. Pure lies, nothing else.
Username does check out.
Would like to see some evidence supporting that beggars get an average close to $40 an hour. Searched for papers about the topic and haven't found anything being remotely close to what you suggest.
I’ve known a number of homeless folks, and not a single one has made anywhere near that flying a sign, but plenty of them have had everything they owned trashed by the cops, who also confiscated any cash because the homeless folks “couldn’t explain where they got it.”
You ever stand at a bus stop for 20 minutes across the street from a highway with an exit ramp that has a light at the street?
They walk up and down the exit ramp as it has a red light. Walking car to car. Roughly 1 in 5 give money. The light lasts about 2 minutes. Which means every 4 minutes he has a new set of cars exiting the highway. That means there's 15 light cycles in a 60 minute time period, assuming the city doesn't have automated changes at set intervals (some lights do).
So lets say he gets 1 in 5. And lets set the number real low. Lets say he only gets $3 on average every light change.
That's $45 dollars an hour. Which is actually shooting low when you consider people like my aunt. Who gave the guy $20. Those people aren't the norm. But they exist, and would bring up the average easily.
Then there's other times I'd see several light changes where nobody gave him anything.
Point is, $40 for that type of a scam, with no overhead, no expenses, no payroll, nothing, is pretty low. It's probably more, but I don't have exact numbers. I just see him whenever I catch a certain bus.
The fact that he has a nice car makes me think he either has a second passive income, or I'm WAY undershooting it.
Because I'm pretty sure those nice sports cars are like 100k. Even $40/hr I don't think would cover that.
You know what's better than guesstimates and gut feelings?
Actual statistics: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10575677211036498
In adjusted 2020 USD, the economic yield from panhandling is most often $2–$16 per hour, $20–$60 per day, and $200–$500 per month
Slightly less than your projected $45 for 8 hours a day.
In some sketchy areas of the world, the local gangs use the disabled/amputees to beg all day and collect a portion of their donations
Add the cop's take as an overhead.
homeless fight clubs.
Go on...
kinda like the UFC in a way.
But with booze and rabid rats
The homeless-industrial complex. Which, having thought that out, sounds awful.