Reply #59: Who would stand on a street corner begging for a few bucks [View All]

if they had any other source of income? I see people standing with their cardboard signs at freeway exit ramps all over my city in all kinds of terrible weather, and I can't imagine doing that - being out there in the subzero cold we get here, or the pouring rain, or (lately) 100-degree heat, just to pick up a few dollars here and there from the small number of people who stop to give them something. If you need to do that you're poor. If I have cash I usually will give these people some. Maybe they are scamming; I think mostly not. Maybe some will buy liquor instead of food - so what?

And during the depression there were, in fact, beggars - including hobos who'd ride freight cars from town to town, stopping at houses where a previous hobo had left a sign indicating the person who lived there might help them.

Compared to people in the Sudan or Bangladesh, for example, poor people in America aren't *as* poor. That doesn't mean we should ignore them or diminish their problems.

I'm not particularly religious, but there's something to think about at Matthew 25:34.