7 ms·
Begging with an iPhone?
by puffythefish 17y ago
Begging with an iPhone?
- vaksel 17y agoa begger in a big town like NYC can clear 90-120K no problem.
- kareemm 17y agoi've heard this before but haven't been able to verify. do you have a source?
- omnipath 17y agoThis American Life did a podcast (can't find it at the moment) where they followed two guys who decided to become homeless, and beg for money in NYC while trying to write poetry and stories. Each guy easily cleared 60k, as I recall. So it's definitely doable. In fact, another article I read told about a couple in Portland, Oregon that cleared 50k between the two of the begging.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- wallflower 17y agoThis American Life source does not appear to check out on 60k while homeless figure: "Gregory: I was making 60 grand a year, 60 grand, not working hard. If I wanted to push it I could push it to 70. They want you to do over time on Wall Street. Wall Street judges you by your overtime. So yeah, I was raking it in. And I was spending it just as fast on alcohol. I would get up at 8 at night, take a shower, have a pint of Jack Daniel?s on me when I got into my car and drove to work." Poetry sample: "A Few of My (cough) Favorite Things" Waking up achy, And out in the open. Guard dogs are barking. Before words are spoken. Wrought iron benches, That causes suff-ring. These are a few of my favorite things. Taking a shower, With four dozen others. Moving around, In a stench that can smother. Finding that you, Are the source of the stink! These are a few of my favorite things. When the bottles dry, And the smokes are gone, And I'm feeling low http://www.prx.org/pieces/29262/transcripts/29262 http://www.prx.org/pieces/29262/transcripts/29262
- sahaj 17y agoreal homeless folks don't have the "ummf" to clear 50k (the reason they are homeless); they get enough for a beer or whatever and they stop begging.
- maximilian 17y agoIn order to make $90,000 begging, you would have to get $250 every day of the year. This seems highly unlikely. I'd say most beggars make more like $20 a day, but I'm just doing armchair science here.
- vaksel 17y agoyes but you have to look at the density of people. $250 every day = $25/hour if you "work" 10 hours a day. So 1 person donating $1 every 2.4 minutes. In that 2.4 minute period, there are probably 1,000 people walking by. Is it really that far fetched, that 1 out of those 1,000 people will "give back"? Especially in a city like New York where there are plenty of high income individuals?
- scott_s 17y agoAnalysis is not evidence. Yes, it sounds reasonable. But that doesn't mean it's true. There are many factors your simple model doesn't take into account.
- maximilian 17y agoI guess the problem is reasonable to me is not necessarily reasonable to someone else. It still blows my mine that someone could make so much money begging. I haven't read the above posted article, but it still seems unlikely to me that beggars make that much money. Perhaps a better way of putting it is: The average beggar doesn't make anywhere near that much. I can imagine some especially good ones that make a solid living doing it, but most don't make much.
- ellyagg 17y agoThe person he replied to said it "seems highly unlikely". This isn't a peer-reviewed journal here. We're speculating. I will mention that I gave $20 dollars to a girl last week who claimed she had had her stuff stolen and didn't have enough money to get a train back to her house. There's a significant chance she was scamming me, and the point is, with a plausible story, I'm pretty sure you can find many "suckers" every day.
- puffythefish 17y agoPerhaps, but why would a person give money to someone begging with an iPhone?
- socmoth 17y agoprobably not, but i've met three homeless people with iphones. they don't usually have data plans, they just have the phones. maybe wifi?