No. I don’t have any change for you, sorry.

I know a lot about panhandling, and it’s not just because I live in the city core. I think I understand it, and I spend a lot of time talking with folks who spend most of their day doing it. But I never have any cash for any of them.

The first, purely selfish, reason is that when money leaves my wallet I am buying something. Unless there’s a hole in your pocket, this is your case too. Everyone who gives a squeegee a dime is buying something. It can be pride, it can be a sense of contribution, it can be easing a guilty conscience, it can be to feel the warm glow of human compassion… It can probably be very many things but it’s always something and I haven’t felt the need to purchase any of these things in a long time.

Though I respect, and will defend, the panhandler’s right to ask for cash, I don’t think this hidden tax is beneficial to the society. Notwithstanding the direct costs (cash value transfered and not spent elsewhere), the amount of human time and energy spent doing this could be used to actually generate wealth (by performing useful acts of creation) instead of just shuffling money around. If you assume just one calorie spent per participant, per exchange, and set the average number of queries in a day to 500 and multiply that by 2000 panhandlers, you get a total of 2,000,000 calories spent on basically nothing. That’s enough to feed 1000 people (based on a 2k calorie diet). Sure, you might say “but that’s what the panhandling was for–to feed people”. Irrespective of whether the money is actually used for food, the point is that those same calories, spent doing productive work would result in a salary (i.e. cash for food) AND productive work (i.e. more resulting goodness in the world).

There’s also the question of where the cash is really going. It might be for food, it might be for booze and cigarettes. Other than the potential health or public disturbance costs, these aren’t really a big deal. But what if it’s junk or crack? There is the possible moral dilemma in helping to sustain these bad habits but to me the most important question is where the money winds up. Whether it’s the hell’s angels, the gang of Jamaicans or the CIA, until these drugs are legalized the cash is supporting a system which inflicts pain and terror on many levels. No thanks.

Then there is the panhandling set point or critical mass. A city of a given size can support a certain number of panhandlers. This number is determined by things like number of people, cost of living and average donation. Though the former are relatively stable, average donation is a function of ‘generosity’ and demand (number of panhandlers). Obviously, people can only give so much so if there’s more demand the supply will be spread more thinly. But more importantly, there’s people’s mood and if you’re getting asked for some cash every three steps you’ll eventually get so annoyed that your donations will quickly drop to zero. You could say, that by making panhandling less attractive and keeping the numbers down I’m actually helping those that are already doing it… But that might just be sophistry

Also in relation to the demand density is the fact that as numbers increase, the amount of discomfort experienced by people also increases, probably not linearly. This is, in my experience, especially true for those unaccustomed to the experience such as tourists. And when tourism suffers, the influx of cash into a city goes down and everyone, including those panhandlers, suffers.

Finally, there’s the fact that I like adults. Adults are people who are free to make their own choices and responsible for the consequences of those choices. Yes, I might enjoy it if mom and dad or some surrogate would pay my rent and habits, but in the end I think we’re all better off when people fly with their own wings. I actually support a left-leaning government with social systems in place to aid those in need. At this time, it isn’t a great life but it’s enough to live on while you find your bearings. You need only ask, and you get a place to live and food in the fridge–so be my guest and just do it. However, I’d much rather have every able-bodied individual contributing something–anything, whatever they love or want to do–rather than sustaining themselves parasitically.

That’s why, I’m sorry man, but no: I got no change.