Helping Poor People and Beggars
reverendhornibastard
Depraved Deacon of Degeneracy
I have known many, many poor people. After 15 years living in developing and third world countries (Indonesia and Angola) and 20+ years traveling frequently to many other destinations that our deeply sensitive leader, President Turdbucket, calls “shit-hole countries,” (Pakistan, Nigeria, Algeria, Tunisia, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) its safe to say I have seen more abject poverty and encountered more beggars than most Americans have.
POOR PEOPLE:
Despite what some simple-minded fools who don’t even realize they are wearing rose tinted glasses might tell you, having at least a modicum of wealth is far preferable to being poor. Any poor person any where in the world knows this and will happily set you straight on this point.
I am not implying that all poor people are miserable and that all rich people are happy. We all know it’s not that simple.
I was quite happy when I was poor (but I was never starving and always had a dry, warm place to sleep where I didn’t have to feed the mosquitoes all night). When I eventually achieved financial success, I was not immeasurably happier. I did, however, have a lot less to worry about. I didn’t have to worry about paying my rent, covering medical expenses or about my wife and children driving around town in an unreliable, unsafe car.
The moment in my life when I felt richest was the first time I went into a grocery store after graduation and starting a job. For the first time ever I purchased navel oranges and seedless grapes without concerning myself with their price.
There is a very good reason we try to eliminate poverty. Notwithstanding all the nonsense about poverty being a purer or more moral lifestyle, the truth is, poverty sucks! Anybody who has lived in serious poverty will tell you. Even Balzac, who railed against capitalism, married an heiress and still managed to live beyond his means ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hon… ). He clearly understood it was more fun living like a rich man than living like a poor one.
I’ve NEVER met anyone who was poor and who preferred to remain impoverished.
Helping the poor is not as easy or simple as following the knee-jerk impulses that are so common among the well-meaning but misguided bleeding hearts in the developed world. Sometimes the reality on the ground conflicts with our ill-informed desire to help make things better.
I know people who have worked (or still work) in third world sweatshops. They know they have lousy jobs but still consider their current circumstances to be a STEP UP from what they had before they VOLUNTARILY went to work in the sweatshop. When I told them that some well-meaning people in more affluent countries wanted to close down the sweatshops where they worked, they were horrified. They couldn’t understand why anyone would be so mean-spirited.
They know something that most of the rest of the world fails to appreciate. If those sweat shops are closed, their lives will quickly go from bad to much worse. If their children cannot work in the sweatshops, that doesn’t mean they will be in school instead. Their children will be forced to find other ways of earning money. Some of the few alternatives available to their children are far more dangerous or unspeakably cruel than anything they will encounter in the sweatshops.
Meaningful aid has to be sustainable and must fit practically within the circumstances and immediate needs of those we intend to help. We can’t just wave a magic wand and instantly convert rural Pakistan or the Indonesian “kampung” into Marin County, California.
Mrs. Hornibastard #3 and I do what we can to help. We are on a first-name basis with the poor people we are trying to help. We (and and especially Mrs. Hornibastard #3) understand their needs. Our assistance is intended to be of immediate and sustaining value to the recipients. For example, we have paid for water wells, repaired a bridge, funded the college training for a few promising young people and bought one woman out of a particularly cruel indentured servitude. But all of our efforts are pathetically insignificant in the vast ocean of cruelty and poverty.
BEGGARS:
Some poor people are beggars but not all beggars are poor people. Some beggars are rich. They beg for money because begging is their profession.
Religious televangelists and politicians routinely beg for money. It’s what they do best. They are expert at fleecing the poor by falsely promising that they will help them avoid drowning in debt.
https://youtu.be/hiHghDYvpBU
https://youtu.be/Unhqk-sAtZ4
Televangelists: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
It’s pure bull shit, but they persist because many poor people are so desperate to escape poverty they are prepared to believe anything regardless of how absurd.
Begging in the third world is far more widespread and far more complicated than I ever imagined. I always gave money to the lepers I encountered on the street. I was certain they were for real. But I was initially fooled by many of the other pathetic beggars I encountered.
I saw men carrying around hopelessly deformed and crippled people who I assumed were their relatives. I couldn’t help but give them money. I eventually realized that the deformed, crippled people they were carrying around were “props” they rented from others to help make their begging more effective.
It gets worse.
I often saw women standing in the middle of the street near busy intersections, carrying infants. The heat and air pollution were awful. I felt terrible for these mothers carrying their infants as they wandered in the clouds of pollution while begging in the street. The infants were always crying (presumably from hunger or pulmonary distress).
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2050
I was wrong.
The babies were “props” which the beggars borrowed from the infant’s real mom for a daily fee. The babies were always crying because the beggars used small pins to prick the baby’s butt to make them cry. It’s apparently good for business if you’re a professional beggar to carry a baby that is always crying.
A local who knew better told me it was easy to spot the beggar mommies who were genuine. When you roll down the window to give them money, they try to put their infant through the window and into your car!
No beggar lady ever tried to give me her baby at an intersection, but I saw it happen to others.
I don’t tear up easily, but that sure did it.
Some beggars are fine actors or actresses. There was an old lady who worked a corner I passed daily on my way home from work in Jakarta. She limped in a very painful way as she went from car to car. Her face was always contorted in pain. She was very convincing.
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2052
Then one day she was not working the corner as usual. I spotted her on the side of the road taking a break under a tree with some of the other beggars. She was drinking a Coca-Cola and smoking a cigarette, all smiles and moving well without any sign of a limp.
When I encountered children (ages 4 - 10) begging in the street, I felt compelled to give them money. Again, a local suggested I look for the adult sitting nearby in the shade. That was the person who put the kids in the street to beg and who would pocket nearly all the money collected.
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2051
Sure enough, that’s what I found as soon as I began looking for them.
So I started keeping fresh fruit, fruit juice, cookies and candy in my car. When I encountered children begging in the street I gave them something they could consume on the spot and not have to share with the bitch who stuck them out in the street to beg for cash.
If you really want to help the poor, you have to understand their world first.
I found that the reality is even worse than I thought and that helping them meaningfully is less straightforward than I expected it to be.
Except in America! Reverend Hornibastard knows how to help the poor in America! He is always among the first to step forward to help the poor in America ...
... especially if they have nice tits, a cute ass and know how to pole dance!
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2053
POOR PEOPLE:
Despite what some simple-minded fools who don’t even realize they are wearing rose tinted glasses might tell you, having at least a modicum of wealth is far preferable to being poor. Any poor person any where in the world knows this and will happily set you straight on this point.
I am not implying that all poor people are miserable and that all rich people are happy. We all know it’s not that simple.
I was quite happy when I was poor (but I was never starving and always had a dry, warm place to sleep where I didn’t have to feed the mosquitoes all night). When I eventually achieved financial success, I was not immeasurably happier. I did, however, have a lot less to worry about. I didn’t have to worry about paying my rent, covering medical expenses or about my wife and children driving around town in an unreliable, unsafe car.
The moment in my life when I felt richest was the first time I went into a grocery store after graduation and starting a job. For the first time ever I purchased navel oranges and seedless grapes without concerning myself with their price.
There is a very good reason we try to eliminate poverty. Notwithstanding all the nonsense about poverty being a purer or more moral lifestyle, the truth is, poverty sucks! Anybody who has lived in serious poverty will tell you. Even Balzac, who railed against capitalism, married an heiress and still managed to live beyond his means ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hon… ). He clearly understood it was more fun living like a rich man than living like a poor one.
I’ve NEVER met anyone who was poor and who preferred to remain impoverished.
Helping the poor is not as easy or simple as following the knee-jerk impulses that are so common among the well-meaning but misguided bleeding hearts in the developed world. Sometimes the reality on the ground conflicts with our ill-informed desire to help make things better.
I know people who have worked (or still work) in third world sweatshops. They know they have lousy jobs but still consider their current circumstances to be a STEP UP from what they had before they VOLUNTARILY went to work in the sweatshop. When I told them that some well-meaning people in more affluent countries wanted to close down the sweatshops where they worked, they were horrified. They couldn’t understand why anyone would be so mean-spirited.
They know something that most of the rest of the world fails to appreciate. If those sweat shops are closed, their lives will quickly go from bad to much worse. If their children cannot work in the sweatshops, that doesn’t mean they will be in school instead. Their children will be forced to find other ways of earning money. Some of the few alternatives available to their children are far more dangerous or unspeakably cruel than anything they will encounter in the sweatshops.
Meaningful aid has to be sustainable and must fit practically within the circumstances and immediate needs of those we intend to help. We can’t just wave a magic wand and instantly convert rural Pakistan or the Indonesian “kampung” into Marin County, California.
Mrs. Hornibastard #3 and I do what we can to help. We are on a first-name basis with the poor people we are trying to help. We (and and especially Mrs. Hornibastard #3) understand their needs. Our assistance is intended to be of immediate and sustaining value to the recipients. For example, we have paid for water wells, repaired a bridge, funded the college training for a few promising young people and bought one woman out of a particularly cruel indentured servitude. But all of our efforts are pathetically insignificant in the vast ocean of cruelty and poverty.
BEGGARS:
Some poor people are beggars but not all beggars are poor people. Some beggars are rich. They beg for money because begging is their profession.
Religious televangelists and politicians routinely beg for money. It’s what they do best. They are expert at fleecing the poor by falsely promising that they will help them avoid drowning in debt.
https://youtu.be/hiHghDYvpBU
https://youtu.be/Unhqk-sAtZ4
Televangelists: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
It’s pure bull shit, but they persist because many poor people are so desperate to escape poverty they are prepared to believe anything regardless of how absurd.
Begging in the third world is far more widespread and far more complicated than I ever imagined. I always gave money to the lepers I encountered on the street. I was certain they were for real. But I was initially fooled by many of the other pathetic beggars I encountered.
I saw men carrying around hopelessly deformed and crippled people who I assumed were their relatives. I couldn’t help but give them money. I eventually realized that the deformed, crippled people they were carrying around were “props” they rented from others to help make their begging more effective.
It gets worse.
I often saw women standing in the middle of the street near busy intersections, carrying infants. The heat and air pollution were awful. I felt terrible for these mothers carrying their infants as they wandered in the clouds of pollution while begging in the street. The infants were always crying (presumably from hunger or pulmonary distress).
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2050
I was wrong.
The babies were “props” which the beggars borrowed from the infant’s real mom for a daily fee. The babies were always crying because the beggars used small pins to prick the baby’s butt to make them cry. It’s apparently good for business if you’re a professional beggar to carry a baby that is always crying.
A local who knew better told me it was easy to spot the beggar mommies who were genuine. When you roll down the window to give them money, they try to put their infant through the window and into your car!
No beggar lady ever tried to give me her baby at an intersection, but I saw it happen to others.
I don’t tear up easily, but that sure did it.
Some beggars are fine actors or actresses. There was an old lady who worked a corner I passed daily on my way home from work in Jakarta. She limped in a very painful way as she went from car to car. Her face was always contorted in pain. She was very convincing.
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2052
Then one day she was not working the corner as usual. I spotted her on the side of the road taking a break under a tree with some of the other beggars. She was drinking a Coca-Cola and smoking a cigarette, all smiles and moving well without any sign of a limp.
When I encountered children (ages 4 - 10) begging in the street, I felt compelled to give them money. Again, a local suggested I look for the adult sitting nearby in the shade. That was the person who put the kids in the street to beg and who would pocket nearly all the money collected.
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2051
Sure enough, that’s what I found as soon as I began looking for them.
So I started keeping fresh fruit, fruit juice, cookies and candy in my car. When I encountered children begging in the street I gave them something they could consume on the spot and not have to share with the bitch who stuck them out in the street to beg for cash.
If you really want to help the poor, you have to understand their world first.
I found that the reality is even worse than I thought and that helping them meaningfully is less straightforward than I expected it to be.
Except in America! Reverend Hornibastard knows how to help the poor in America! He is always among the first to step forward to help the poor in America ...
... especially if they have nice tits, a cute ass and know how to pole dance!
https://www.tuscl.net/photo.php?id=2053
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5 comments
Anyway, they ARE shithole countries. The biggest problem with helping people. In those places en mass is the rampant corruption that diverts most aid from the people who need it to those who control the ports of entry and licensing. There is just no easy answer, as we have learned in too many countries to count, Ethiopia and Haiti being two notable examples.
I have been to some very poor countries like Guatemala and Honduras, and it's hard to look at the people and the lives they live. You feel rich when you see their homes and ragged clothes. I wish I knew a good way to help them. As Rickdugan says, corruption diverts foreign aid from those who really need it.
“You do know that there are ways to summarize your points, no?”
Thanks, Rick! Valid criticism!
I was in a hurry. If I’d had more time I would have composed a pithier post!
The kind of poverty we have in the US and the other industrialized countries is entirely manufactured, created deliberately for effect.
Having a visible underclass, regularly subjected to ritual humiliations, keeps the rest of the work force inline.
We already produce more than enough of everything to provide a perfectly decent living for everyone.
We have the ability to provide everyone with a better material life than even royalty had enjoyed in past centuries.
As Fuller says, the reason we do not see this is that we demand that everyone prove that they can earn a living.
And then we do great environmental harm and great harm to worker rights and safety, just to maintain the work ethic, not because anything more is needed.
SJG