There’s been a renewed call from a downtown business owner to criminalize panhandling in Seattle. There are a number of problems with this, not the least of which is that asking for money is an act of free speech and therefore can’t be illegal under the liberal, do-gooder U.S. Constitution we’re currently saddled with. Sure, I hate rude people who say “exCUSE me,” meaning “step aside so I may pass quickly, because I am so important that a one-second delay on my way to my appointment with my latte should be declared a national emergency.” But a law against saying “exCUSE me,” between the waterfront and the convention center can’t happen. It’s protected speech.
But there’s another issue. Panhandlers who work downtown make money they can’t make any other way. A typical panhandler makes more than $15 an hour (wink, wink). That’s without having to wait five years for the city’s minimum wage hike to take full effect. So panhandlers are just like you and me, people who want an income they can live on, except that they’re doing something about it now, instead of whining, “Boo hoo, my job doesn’t pay me enough for both rent and food.” They suck it up and get to work.
By all estimates the average fulltime, 40-hour per week panhandler, starting out, takes in a minimum of $2,500 per month (nudge, nudge). That’s all money that’s spent locally, drives the economy and keeps it thriving. It lets them rent apartments so they don’t have to sleep in alleys or in tents in the woods like homeless people who are too proud to panhandle.
My immediate gut reaction to business owners who don’t like panhandlers on the sidewalks outside their businesses is: This is what happens when you stop giving people the raises they need to get by. The business owners dragged their feet too long, and the city’s minimum wage hike is coming too late. Is that an unfair reaction?
Yes! It is. Because there’s another reason there are more panhandlers than ever. The state’s welfare system has been mostly dismantled. Washington state has reduced or eliminated support for disabled people to such an extent that it would be absurd to think they wouldn’t come out on the streets looking for help. What else are people supposed to do?
So the panhandlers multiply for reasons that anyone could identify. It’s a combination of effects, low-paying jobs and a safety net that has been shredded by elected politicians. Why would anyone opposed to panhandling call for those problems to be fixed? That would require a political will and take time — and might possibly never accomplish anything. Instead, they could just incessantly ask for impossible laws to be passed against panhandling and never accomplish anything.
Clearly what would work best is a change in the constitution that lets us pass the kind of laws we need to shut people up and make them get out of our sight whenever we get our collective shorts in a twist. That would solve the core of the problem, by getting rid of the annoying “you can’t do that” part. We could apply it to the business owners who keep begging for laws against panhandlers. Because I’m really tired of hearing about this.
I have little hope that such a change will happen. There are too many wishywashy liberals around who would cry in their milk over such a plan. “You’d be violating the business owners’ civil rights.” “We’ll get the aclu after you.” “You’ll be sorry,” they’d say.
Exercises for collective improvement:
Consult a history book and figure out who wrote the Constitution of the United States.
In the light of what you find, explain why the constitution is always getting in the way of business. Someone goofed, didn’t they?
Lastly, explain why someone would call for panhandling to be illegal, but never suggest that giving money to panhandlers should be illegal. Hint: consider who is the easier target, the panhandler or the person giving to the panhandler.