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mooreolith t1_j5waahh wrote

Reply to comment by DigitalSteven1 in The transition to digital currency is terrible for homeless people. by YoThatsFed

You may not turn their life around with your $20 gift, but you might buy them a sandwhich, and some reason to stay in a heated place for a while. That's definitely helping. Helping does not equal fix everything forever.

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fenton7 t1_j5xbe6t wrote

The point is that if you give the $20 to a homeless charity they are going to use it to provide 20 or even 40 meals in places where real homeless congregate. Giving money to panhandlers is vastly less efficient not just because many are scammers but also because you aren't reaching most of the homeless population or an organization that can leverage economies of scale to buy efficiently. The people who hang out at busy intersections with signs, particularly in suburbs where they know many easy marks exist, are not representative of the real population or problem.

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mooreolith t1_j5xg3dq wrote

That's a fair point. All I'm saying is it doesn't not make that one homeless person's day. Maybe you see the same people every day after a while.

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