The women and children I saw in Rome whom I believed to be Romanian appear to be showing up in So Cal now. They now like to hang out outside of church!

And I want to thank you for that pack of smokes...

I refuse to give hand-outs. I've been asked countless times.

Although, while carrying, I haven't been asked once ;)

Give it time, they will all slowly migrate to Venice Beach. Then it will be an issue of "Who wants to rent the barge?" to dump them out at sea.

There is NO panhandling at the Wallmart!

Just wait a few more years and some of you might be on the streets...with you little tin cups..

Apparently there is.

Panhandling or begging is world wide. The relative "wealth" of the beggars is in proportion to the wealth of the country they are found in.

It is an age old profession and unless a society turns draconian it will always be present.

I would rather have the panhanders than a police state anyday.

They're all over major cities in Europe. I even saw a few panhandling in English in Berlin a few mos. ago.

I was at a gas station and had a guy ask for money for food 30 years ago. I gave him a fiver and said don't buy beer! He walked right in the store and bought a beer.

Never given money again.

Maybe a quid but never a fiver

my son used to be a liberal, always dropping coinage into cans. then he saw his first paychecks and the deductions. yeah...he's not so liberal anymore.

I will always figuer out a way to earn my way as will my kids.

When I was in China for two weeks I only saw one begger - some crazy loon in a diaper doing what looked like yoga on a wet side walk. There were old men collecting aluminum, paper and glass, sweeping streets with tree branches, trying to sell ol round eyes anything and everything - but no beggers. I guess if you don't work you don't eat? Either way it seems to work.

I give more respect to robbers than beggers. At least robbing you requires a certain amount of guts, planning and energy. IMO there is no lower form of human than a begger...

Gas nozzles up here work the same way, so I'm well versed in their operation.

Maybe my description - "on the verge of getting violent" - didn't fully capture the situation. Maybe I presented a very serious situation too light-heartedly to convey the real seriousnous of it. I was being threatened, very aggressively - to the point where it was time to defend myself. Being in the great state of California, my options were, of course, somewhat limited.

I tried to hit him in the face, to blind him, like if I had a can of pepper spray. All I got was his chest down to his pants. I know that much gas soaked into one's clothing stings like hell as it is, but I figured he was going to recover from the surprise and be right back at me anyway. That's when I made a big show out of asking Drago for his lighter (he didn't actually have one, since he didn't smoke, but this guy didn't have to know that).

And yes, the police were called, by the gas station attendant. He came out to tell me that, and to thank me for running this thug off. He left his Suburban behind, though, so I can't imagine he was going to be that hard to find. I offered to stick around, but he said not to bother - this guy was already known as a problem.

Before Slumdog Millionaire came out, I saw my first horribly deformed child beggar in China and asked my local friend about that. I mean, I had just never seen kids with legs so deformed. She said they're often kidnapped and maimed by their kidnappers to make them more pitiful beggars. No matter how they tug at your heart strings, the money you give them goes to their master. You can imagine what a target I was for such kids. I quickly learned how to say "I'm calling the police" in Mandarin while whipping out my cell phone. Sometimes that was the only way to get them to take their hands off my pants without getting physical with them. Our beggars are true amateurs.

I think this came up in a similar thread some years ago about the 60 Minutes segment I saw about a beggar in NYC several decades ago - 50's, 60's, 70's, I can't remember. It was about a guy who got up in the morning in an upscale neighborhood north of NYC - Westchester maybe. He had breakfast, got dressed in his suit, kissed the wife & kids, and left in his Mercedes with his briefcase. When he got into the city, he parked his car, got his disguise out of the trunk & changed into a beggar constume (don't remember where he changed). He sat at the same place daily with a cup. At the end of the day he changed clothes again and drove his Mercedes home. 60 Minutes said he made $50K/yr. doing that back then.

Fixed it for you. Some will only be able to afford the magnesium cups...

So all the people begging on the street are professional con artists?

Is there ANY lie you people won't tell yourselves to justify your greed and crass disregard for others?

To be fair: I don't think anyone intentionally made that blanket statement. Even the original poster mentioned to his son that he would have given to an actually needy person. In many areas panhandling is actually a crime, which should really be cleaned up. Although times are tough, the need to panhandle really does not exist. There are countless unskilled opportunities that pay as much if not more than panhandling.

yea i remember that story. a news story aired on chicago news a couple of years ago on th same topic. UIC did a study on the topic and found that on average, beggars can earn $10/hr of course tax free because after all, it is a gift from one person to another.

Harddrive intentionally made that blanket statement.