spare some change?

sorry, man
Total votes: 43 (41%)
not crap
Total votes: 62 (59%)
Total votes: 105

act: giving to panhandlers

341
We will have homelessness until we recognize food, clothes, shelter, education and healthcare as basic human rights. Accomplishing this is basically impossible in a free-market capitalist society. Especially one which prizes the right of a rich person to buy 57 yachts on a whim over the right of someone off the street to put some nutritious food in their belly or to see a doctor.

People hire illegals because they are motivated (you have to be motivated to immigrate to a different country) and will work for less than the legal wage, often in unsafe working conditions. If they complain about it they will be fired or deported. They are the closest thing our society has to slaves, of course they will be hired by unscrupulous employers.
“As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.”

act: giving to panhandlers

342
Rick Reuben wrote:
steve wrote:being homeless requires a lot of hard work.

Amazing. Well then, if you see homeless people as capable of doing a lot of hard work, then why do you have such a hard time envisioning them holding a job??????


You really don't get it, do you Bob?

The "work" homeless people do is called surviving.




Also...
Angus Jung wrote:There are millions of reasons why people can't or don't work straight jobs. Most of them are things we take for granted to the point where we don't even consider them (like having a picture I.D., for instance).

...many homeless people simply aren't able to deal with the regimentation and the basic social interactions that are required to work a normal job. It isn't always because of addiction, either. Some people are deeply anti-social. Others have never been able to deal with authority in any official capacity.

Living in a society requires many compromises that some can't or won't make. This inability usually results in great suffering and hardship. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with ability or willingness to do work.

Where I live there are highly self-organized, consistent, hard-working individuals who go to different neighborhoods every night with shopping carts and comb through residential recycle bins that are set out at the curb, looking for items that can be exchanged for small amounts of cash at recycling centers. It's obvious that these people take their 'jobs' seriously.

act: giving to panhandlers

343
Rick Reuben wrote:I'm glad all the sellout liberals keep on advising the homeless to keep on living under the underpass instead of exploring that 'job' thing.


Your argument might start to get some traction if someone, at some point on this thread, had actually said this...

...in fact, the only person to have suggested that is...erm...you.
.

act: giving to panhandlers

345
Rick Reuben wrote:Steve casts ALL the homeless into a category of homeless that is unemployable.
No he doesn't, and it's plainly dishonest to make such a claim.

The moral of the story is you're a shitty person. You're not a liberal, you're not a revolutionary, you're not even a decent human being or an honest thinker - you're a protofascist whose braying assaults on leftism, immigrants, and the poor can only be delivered in a sloppy mumble around your capitalist master's erection.

Is that how you plan to fight the power, Bob? By hoping he falls asleep after he's done with you?
http://www.myspace.com/leopoldandloebchicago

Linus Van Pelt wrote:I subscribe to neither prong of your false dichotomy.

act: giving to panhandlers

346
Rick,

Calling these people "stupid street garbage" seems gratuitous to me; I can understand your refusal to give them anything and your anger towards such parasitic non-living is not entirely unwarranted.

These people may have dehumanized themselves through drug addiction and the refusal of any collaborative effort but you shouldn't add to this with such phrases.

You seem to think that a lot of people - including your fellow forum members - are taking the easy way out on many things.

act: giving to panhandlers

347
Did any of you catch what he actually wrote:

Rick Reuben wrote: The dirty ass white meth head who runs the
"my car broke down, I need money to get back to town XYZ" scam is a shitbag I have no charity for. Fuck him and his bad choices. I ain't givin' to 'homeless' who are not even true homeless- they're stupid street garbage.
Marsupialized wrote:I want a piano made out of jello.
It's the only way I'll be able to achieve the sound I hear in my head.

act: giving to panhandlers

348
So according to Rick, if they only tried, they could get jobs. If he only tried, he could be a priest. Rick, do you think you should be made to suffer because you haven't? Because of this choice you made? You could do it if you wanted and live tax-free, something I know would appeal to you, but you didn't. You decided not to be a priest, so you must pay taxes. It was your choice. Stop bitching about being taxed, you got there by choice.

Whether someone "could" get a job or not, and I think only a small number of them actually could, these people are homeless and at risk. That part of it doesn't seem to bother Rick because he considers it "their fault," or maybe the fault of the Mexicans, but whatever, he doesn't want to do anything to ameliorate their problems.

He wants them to suffer. He thinks that's good market capitalism at work. He is a sick fuck.
steve albini
Electrical Audio
sa at electrical dot com
Quicumque quattuor feles possidet insanus est.

act: giving to panhandlers

349
In a civilized society we shouldn't just allow vulnerable people such as those who are homeless to suffer and die just because of the choices they've made.

It can be difficult to extend our care to people who don't appeal to us; the dirty alcoholic homeless man for example. Disgust can mingle with our pity and the impulse to give him some money is cut off.

I often recoil from the homeless people begging on the streets of Dublin and go on my way.

The Republic of Ireland has become a wealthy country and the number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin city centre seems to be increasing.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests