Thats one rich bitch

Quincy wrote:

What does it matter if one woman somewhere didnt donate help slathers of loot to the dying, poor and needy. This is happening all the time. She's like a drop in the ocean. If everyone started giving, well, then, there'd probably no poor people on Earth, and nobody could say that's a bad thing.

I don't think that what you propose is a very good idea. Have you ever heard the saying,

"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day,

Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime"?

In other words, if all the rich people gave all the poor people money, what you would have are a big group of beggars, just looking for more money, and resenting the people who gave the money to them. It would be a bottomless pit, and people would be scratching and clawing to attempt to get the most money. They would have been taught nothing, and would be perpetually on the dole. So what you would have are some people perpetually working to support other people.

I have no problem with helping out in an emergency, as that is temporary, and as a human being, it is a kindness to help one another in times of distress. That is not the same as just handing out money to people, which infantilizes them.

If I were very rich, I would not give money to people, but might start a foundation to help the poor learn skills that they could translate into well paying jobs. By doing that, I would be helping to break the cycle of poverty, not simply prolonging a person's dependence.

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sure, phoenix. she also had a charitable foundation.

that will not stop people from looking at her will. they would look at yours just the same once it would be smeared all over the media. shrug...i just cannot muster much sympathy for her,given the accounts of what she was like in her lifetime, so the judgment calls on her giving ridiculous amounts of money to a dog don't bother me.

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I'm guessing that quite a large number of VERY wealthy people become quite paranoid about their $$$ to the extent that they want to control/reward/punish those same people/family etc that they became paranoid about. So it goes.

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Mame wrote:

Or they may have tried to rip her off, or maybe they kicked the dog...

yeah!

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

Montana wrote:
I'm thinking the few grandchildren that were left out just may not have been worthy of any money from her. Just because someone is family doesn't give them dibs on the assets of others, regardless of who they are.
Maybe they treated her like crap.

I agree. Maybe she just did not like them. Maybe they had enough money of their own. Maybe this, maybe that. Why she cut them out was her business. It was her perogative.

Exactly!

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dys- It could be paranoia, or it could be a desire to wield power. Often, once money is so plentiful that it is no longer an issue, some people use the power and influence that is accorded them by their finances, to control other people.

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Was talking with the owner of the store closest to my house one day a few years ago. He was talking about someone who was hanging around his store looking for hand outs and said "I don't believe in charity (regarding giving people money), but I'll give them a job if they need money". I agreed with him 100% because I see so many people who are more than able to make money for themselves, yet they're always looking for hand outs.
If we give these people money, we're simply enabling them, just like I did with my last two men.

Phoenix touched on this subject and I agree completely.

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montana, do you believe that most homeless people or beggars that ask for money are doing it because they are lazy to work?

...that's a subject for a separate thread though i suspect.... there might have been some on the topic already.

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So what happens to the money once the dog dies?

I don't give homeless people money either. I take it one step further, and rob them of their coins.

Then I have sex with them. Best part about homeless chicks? You can drop them off anywhere.

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I don't know Dag, but I grew up in the city seeing plenty of them and since I knew some of them personally to a certain extent from either giving them rides in my cab or just meeting them somewhere along the line, I've never met one who wasn't able to work.
The majority I've seen are alcoholics and drug addicts and that is no where near a valid excuse for expecting the world to support them.

Here I was, driving a cab at all hours of the night, doing what it takes to provide for my son, yet they felt it was ok to come to my cab and ask me for money and free rides.

I'm not saying they're all like that, but from what I'm seen, I'm talking the majority.

There was one woman who use to come around on trash day to gather bottles and cans. She couldn't speak english, but I could see in her eyes that she was thankful when I started putting all my bottles and cans in a seperate bag for her so she wouldn't have to go through all my trash to get to them.
As far as I'm concerned that woman was working and that made her an exception.

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well, i guess my experience is radically different. i have seldom met a homeless person who would be able to work. most have psychological issues, are asocial, etc... But i'd rather not get into this kind of a debate. i do feel very very strongly about it.

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That's your right Dag ;-)

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dagmaraka wrote:

well, i guess my experience is radically different. i have seldom met a homeless person who would be able to work. most have psychological issues, are asocial, etc...

Same here.

The skills you need to survive on the street, the wear and tear that living on the street has on your psyche and looks, and the reasons you ended up on the street in the first place (severe psychological problems, drugs, alcoholism, abusive homes) - none of that aint any good for your employability.

Anyone who's been on the street for enough time will have an impossible time finding any HR person willing to hire him, even as cleaner or garbage collector. I cant remember a single homeless person I've talked to or gave money to who'd be hired even to pack stuff in a warehouse or flip burgers at McDonalds - never mind managing to keep the job if he'd be so lucky.

Without home, no job; and without job, no home. Anyone who eventually manages to escape that trap is a hero in my book.

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Phoenix32890 wrote:

See, the thing is, when people talk about giving money, or being charitable to other people, they are never talking about themselves being the ones to give the money.

Huh? How do you know?

There's plenty people making the point who are in fact also charitable themselves.

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Complicating the issue is that there are a lot of different kinds of homeless people. The core people are the ones nimh and dag are talking about, and I completely agree with what they say about 'em.

But there are those homeless people, especially young ones, who could do other things and choose not to. They irritate me and I've had many arguments with them; a major complaint is that since they tend to be so visible, they trivialize the very real issues that the core homeless people have. There were a ton of them in Madison, I had a lot of conversations with them. Some of them were runaways with very serious issues -- I consider them a different category. Some of them just wanted to. That's fine, so far as it goes, but as a group they were people who could get bored of it, go home to their parents for food and shelter, get themselves together, and then go out and find a job.

I do completely agree that programs designed to help these people are a great place for money to go. I had at least one client who had been homeless -- temporarily, not the hardest kind of case, but she had real cognitive issues and had been pretty much entirely rejected by her family from infancy, and never taught basic standards of hygiene, for example. I worked with her intensively, taught her a lot of this stuff, and she did get a job.

By the way, if she hadn't been given many fish on the way, there's no way she would have survived long enough to get to my program, and learn how to fish.

I'm not for a minute saying that she's representative, and that it's possible for every homeless person -- it isn't, full stop. Just that I think funding those kinds of programs are useful because there are people that CAN be reached. I don't think that the people who can't be reached, who can't hold a job no matter what, should be summarily dismissed, though. Some people can't be taught how to fish. Does that mean we should refuse to give them a fish, either? Then what?

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soz- I have never had any problem with having the government, as well as private resources, help in assisting the truly disabled. I think that in a country as rich as ours, we can put ourself out tax wise and make sure that the small group of people who really cannot fend for themselves can be helped.

I think that you have hit the nail on the head. There ARE people
who have made a choice, and that choice is to be perpetually dependent. I realize that many of them do have psychological problems, but those problems, IMO, does not give them a free pass to live off the rest of us. I think that attempting to rehabilitate them so that that can become self supporting citizens is the goal that needs to be undertaken.

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dagmaraka wrote:

montana, do you believe that most homeless people or beggars that ask for money are doing it because they are lazy to work?

Without taking a stand between your opinion of poor people and Montana's, I would observe that this question need not decide whether one donates to charity. Some organizations are specifically dedicated to helping poor people's children. Nobody ever said it's the children's fault they were born poor, so aging millionaires can always bequeath their heritage to that kind of charity. Maybe the dog will consider this option when her time comes.

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I'm not sure how this thread switched to a homeless discussion, but we have two very visible homeless women here in our town. I know we have more, obviously, but these two women stand on a major road, at a major intersection all year - in all weather - with all their belongings in 2 suitcases and some large trashbags.
When it's 95 degrees, they have on layers of clothing. They stand, rather than sit, and they are there in the early morning until late evening and then they disappear. Someone told me they sleep at the post office, but I'm not sure.

There are places for them to go for help. We are a small, historic tourist town and it's not like they're going to get beat up or hurt if they accept help like in a shelter in Baltimore City.

It's not a pretty sight. We have many tourists coming into town and I have to admit it is rather off-putting to see these women out there on the corner with all their worldly possessions. I have contacted City Hall about it, and the said they, as well as other organizations and residents have offered solutions to the women, but to no avail.
They can't be forced to accept help, and they can't be forced off the street because they have rights.

At first I thought they were just stubborn. I've come to realize that they both must have serious problems to be doing what they do.
It's a very sad situation.

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sozobe wrote:

I do completely agree that programs designed to help these people are a great place for money to go. I had at least one client who had been homeless -- temporarily, not the hardest kind of case, but she had real cognitive issues and had been pretty much entirely rejected by her family from infancy, and never taught basic standards of hygiene, for example. I worked with her intensively, taught her a lot of this stuff, and she did get a job.

By the way, if she hadn't been given many fish on the way, there's no way she would have survived long enough to get to my program, and learn how to fish.

That's great work you've done, that's amazing, thank you.

The woman you describe is what I mean - anyone who does manage to escape that trap is a hero in my book.

And like you say - even those heroes need help to make it through - the way she needed you.

Meanwhile, I also totally agree that the many who aren't heroes, who dont have the strength to make it out, can hardly just be dismissed to starve on the streets.

Basically, re Phoenix etc - to make my own assessment of folks - in my experience, the "better teach them to fish" argument is more often than not used by people who do in fact neither. They use the argument as an excuse to not give away anything, but they're not actually willing to do some of the teaching either.

Meanwhile, those who have indeed done good work in teaching people how to fish, the way you have Soz, usually seem all too aware that there's a lot of so-called "handouts" involved in the hard trek of making that work too. Like you say, if the woman you worked with hadn't been given many fish on the way, there's no way she would have survived long enough to get to your program and learn how to fish either.

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nimh wrote:

Basically, re Phoenix etc - to make my own assessment of folks - in my experience, the "better teach them to fish" argument is more often than not used by people who do in fact neither. They use the argument as an excuse to not give away anything, but they're not actually willing to do some of the teaching either.

You may be right. But you talk about an "excuse". What I am inferring is that you believe that people are obliged to help the needy. I do not believe that. I think that whether to help or not help is a decision that is properly made by each individual.

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Thats one rich bitch

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