Homelessness, Poverty and Groundcover

How are we going to solve the problem of poverty. Is it just a question of bad individual choices? For some people, it certainly is. For others it's not. An overemphasis on individual decisions can lead people to miss the big picture. 

MLK wrote that "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Doing the work of "restructuring" is very dangerous and very tiring. Sometimes it is easier to concentrate on the small changes that you can make. And there's nothing wrong with that I think.  Although it is good that this non-profit organization is taking individual steps to assist people I still think that the entire society must make institutional changes so that people who have reached advanced age or who have fallen on hard times have a more robust safety net.  

I'm not sure that selling papers in freezing weather is all that different from panhandling. But if this project has helped some people transition into business owners or higher paid employees I can't say anything negative about it. We all just need to do more, that's all.

Does Your Parachute Work?

Things are finally looking up for me financially. Nevertheless I still operate on a thinner margin than I would like. It's taken hard work to get where I am and will take more hard work to get where I want to be. Bad decisions made years ago have ripples down through the decades. There's nothing I can do about that except live and learn. I was reminded of all this recently while I was stopped at two different expressway exit ramps, watching two different young men hold up signs asking for help. They avoided eye contact and I'm sorry to say so did everyone else. They had what appeared to be their worldly belongings in either a milk carton or a backpack. Of course you see people like this all of the time and unfortunately you get used to it. Some people make bad decisions in life. There's plenty of work if you aren't lazy. It's not my problem. There's a decent safety net. Maybe those people all have substance abuse problems. And so on. Those are the things we privately tell ourselves in order remain convinced that WE would never fall so low as to be begging on the street.

But recent unfortunate events in my personal circle of family/friends and the news that the income gap between the richest 1% and everyone else has grown to the widest ever and that even the top 10% are also taking more than half of total income, also a record, have made me wonder (and will hopefully make you wonder), does your parachute really work? How easy is it to find another job that pays the same or more as the one you currently have? How far are you really, from begging strangers for money? 

Let's say you work for someone else. If that person died, transferred or retired, just how safe is your job? I've had the experience of a new boss arriving and wanting to hire and promote his or her own people. Depending on company culture, holdovers from the old regime might just be fired on the spot or not so subtly harassed until they transfer or quit. If your company decides that your services could be better and more cheaply performed by someone else, whether in this country or even overseas, there might not be any hint of change, just a terse email and a humiliating walk-out by company security. I've seen that happen too. It's also true that by the time you reach your forties and fifties and are at or near your maximum earning potential you are also a tempting target for a firm looking to save on salary and benefits or bring in younger and more malleable workers. If you work for yourself and make a mistake in business plan or your leverage you could also lose everything and watch your company go belly up. In any case no matter what happens to you the world will keep on turning. There are very very very few people on this planet who care quite as much about your well being as you do yourself. Because ultimately it's your life. You are the person who will reap the benefits or bear the costs of choices that you make.

If whatever you do today for money was no longer viable starting tomorrow, just how long would it be before you were on the street asking for money. My macho pride says that would never ever ever happen to me. I'm a (insert family name) and WE don't do that. But sometimes I'm not so sure. No one can see the future. Whether it's medical bills, lawsuits, divorce, bad personal habits, deaths, job loss there's always something that hits you when you least expect it. There are numerous calamities that could wipe out whatever financial stability you've attained. Winter is coming for us all. We don't know exactly when but it is coming. Count on it.

Now there are also tons of ways to deal with this risk and we've discussed some of them before. Spending less than you earn and saving the difference is the number one solution. Playing your cards right and regularly saving your money immediately after entering the workforce can give you a nice little nest egg by the time you hit your late thirties, forties and fifties and presumably start to slow down a little. Starting a side business is a great way to bring some extra income into your pockets. Keeping your skills up to date, staying in touch with close friends and family, avoiding or limiting consumer debt and getting married are also helpful. Divorce is obviously a big risk but having a second income and/or a second pair of hands to perform tasks you otherwise would have to spend time and money on is a huge advantage of marriage.

Still although it is ultimately on the individual to find his way through life I can't help but wonder if the changes we've made in our political economy over the past forty to fifty years have really helped more people than they've hurt. The economy is a man made entity. We can make changes in how we do things. There's not any good reason that we have to accept that the work participation rate in the US is at a 35 year low. Whatever bad decisions a particular homeless person might have made they did so against the backdrop of a US economy that is not producing enough jobs for everyone who wants one. But on my own I can't change that. I would need your help and that of millions more. But I can change my financial situation. To do that I need the help of much fewer people. So that's what I try to do.

Questions

If after you read this your current income was abruptly eliminated what would you do?

How long could you survive at current spending habits without income?

Do you have people who'd be willing to support you? How long? Indefinitely?

Do you have sympathy for the homeless? Do you give money? Volunteer at shelters?

Homeless Hotspots Coming Soon!!!

Have you ever run into a dead zone and are unable to connect to the net? And maybe you're too far away from a Starbucks or other Internet cafe? Or maybe your neighbor has shut you out of their Wi-Fi network?

Never fear. Just sidle up to the nearest homeless person in your neck of the woods. Because there's a chance he might be an actual "Homeless Hotspot". Yes, 21st century America is all about getting EVERYBODY plugged in and empowered. Be the change you seek in others. Yes we can! The world is flat!


At the South by South by SouthWest convention, an ad company BBH, decided to think outside the box.

BBH's experiment, dubbed "Homeless Hotspots," launched during the South by Southwest tech-and-entertainment confab in Austin, drawing complaints from critics who viewed the gimmick as exploitative.

In an interview with The New York Post, BBH chairman Emma Cookson said the company has pulled the plug and will not go forward with plans to continue the project in New York."We have no definite, specific plans yet, in New York City or elsewhere," she said. "This was an initial trial program.""We are now listening carefully to the high level of feedback, trying to learn and respond, and we will then consider what is appropriate to do next," she added.  

At SXSW, more than a dozen homeless people were outfitted with wireless routers and T-shirts declaring: "I'm a 4G hotspot."While the effort, which was not associated with the festival, was crafted to provide a digital connection for SXSW Interactive partipants and a charitable service to the city's homeless, outrage quickly gained momentum on social media and among homeless-rights activists.The four-day trial concluded on Monday afternoon, with the door left ajar to expand the project into various cities. But that's a no-go, for now.Users would ask the homeless hotspot for an access code, and were encouraged to donate $2 to their walking Wi-Fi zone for every 15 minutes spent online.

Emma Cookson: Visionary or Cruella DeVille understudy?

So I guess the latest plan to make money off the homeless cure homelessness won't work. So if a homeless man walks up to you and asks for $2, chances are he's not actually a "Homeless Hotspot" but is just a run of the mill beggar.  You should feel free to do whatever you normally do in situations like that, whether it's to offer the money, refuse, give a long lecture or pretend you didn't see or hear the man.  But on the other hand what makes this offer degrading? People have long hired homeless people to pass out flyers for strip clubs, concerts, political rallies and so on. You name it, someone has tried to save on marketing costs by using homeless people. It's not like Ms. Cookson was the first person to use this logic. I guess she reasoned that as long as people were going to be homeless they might as well make themselves useful. Were the people who were complaining about this going to offer a homeless man a job or place to live? Well some of them, maybe. But generally probably not.

Questions
1) What's your take? Was this degrading?
2) Was this an attempt at innovative marketing or a remarkably stupid idea?
3) If this brought more focus to the problem of homelessness was it a good move?