Fox News Chastises People For Giving To The Homeless: ‘You’re An Enabler’

[babylonsister]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/21/2977711/john-stossel-poor-people/

Fox News Chastises People For Giving To The Homeless: ‘You’re An Enabler’
By Scott Keyes on November 21, 2013 at 2:23 pm


According to Fox News, this woman is likely a scammer, alcoholic, or addict who doesn’t deserve your help.

CREDIT: AP


I don’t throw around the term “hero” lightly, but it takes a special kind of person to look at a homeless man on the street — with no home to stay warm in, little access to a shower or clean clothes, and few possessions — and decide that he’s got it too good. But Fox Business host John Stossel bravely took up that mantle Thursday morning during a guest appearance on Fox & Friends, warning viewers about the perniciousness of giving money to the poor.

Donning a fake beard, Stossel sat on a New York City sidewalk with a cardboard sign asking people for help. “I just begged for an hour but I did well,” he said. “If I did this for an eight-hour day I would’ve made 90 bucks. Twenty-three thou for a year. Tax-free.”

Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who recently purchased a $4 million home in Greenwich, gasped in horror at the prospect of poor people earning $23,000 a year. Some people asking for money “are actually scammers,” Hasselbeck warned, seemingly unaware of the irony that the only panhandling “scammer” Fox News identified was Stossel.

Because he was able to successfully convince good-hearted pedestrians that he was poor, Stossel went on to chastise people who gave the homeless money because, in his view, “most are not…for real.”

He implored viewers to stop giving money to poor people because if you do, “you’re an enabler.”

Watch the segment @ link~


There are a multitude of incorrect claims and assumptions in this short segment:

$23,000 per year: Stossel spent a single hour on the streets and was given approximately $11 by people who wanted to help out someone in need. Therefore, Stossel assumes he would make $23,000 per year. (That figure is actually a steep drop from Stossel’s claims in the past, that he knew of beggars who made $80,000 per year panhandling.) There are a multitude of false assumptions here. First, one of the only scientific surveys of panhandlers found that the vast majority made $25 per day or less, annualized at just over $9,000. Second, $9,000 — or even $23,000 — is difficult to survive on, especially in a city like New York where the median apartment rents for more than $3,000 in Manhattan and more than $2,500 in Brooklyn. Third, spending 8 hours a day asking for money is time that can’t be spent going to classes, gaining skills, picking up diapers for a crying child, or interviewing for a job.

Homeless people “are actually scammers”: Hasselbeck noted that “scammers” were rife among beggars, implying that panhandling is some get-rich-quick scheme engaged in by hucksters. Stossel agreed, saying that most beggars were not “for real.” Their only evidence for this claim? The fact that Stossel spent an hour undercover as a homeless person and was able to fool people into believing he was needy. An actual study of beggars, on the other hand, found that 82 percent were homeless, two in three were disabled, most earned less than $25 per day, and nearly all used the money for food. If Stossel and Hasselbeck truly do believe there is a scourge of well-off people acting as though they’re impoverished so they can successfully panhandle — nobody’s idea of a fun time — what would Stossel have people do? Ask beggars for a tax return before giving them a buck?

Drugs and alcohol: Stossel cautions that well-intentioned people are actually enabling bad behavior because poor people will just use the money for drugs and alcohol. But that’s not what the data shows. While some do use the money for drugs and alcohol, most don’t. What did a survey find 94 percent of panhandlers used the money for? Food.

Chastising beggars is an annual tradition for Stossel: Pretending to be poor and homeless is becoming an annual tradition for Stossel. Here’s his 2011 segment, his 2012 segment, and now his 2013 segment. Some journalists use their perch to give voice to the voiceless. Stossel’s hobby horse, on the other hand, is apparently to convince Fox viewers that poor people are too well off.

Privilege: “I felt foolish and uncomfortable,” Stossel said of the experience, right after imploring viewers not to give poor people the dignity of believing they are actually poor instead of drunks, addicts, or scammers. Watching four wealthy white people sit in a New York television studio and banter about the evils of giving money to homeless people is like waking up the day after your 21st birthday: it’s not surprising, but still painful.

Only Stossel would be capable of benefiting from people’s generosity, and then deciding that they were rubes with too much holiday spirit and we should really all be grinches who are suspicious of one another. War on Christmas, indeed.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

1. You can get our not so lovely reactions here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024072005#post1

[pscot]

2. Keeping them alive.

isn't in the plan. Austerity is what they need, and plenty of it.

[renie408]

3. I think I would rather take the chance that I was giving money to someone who might not need it

...than take the chance I was not giving money to someone who did.

And that is the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

[FLyellowdog]

5. Yay for you.

A man in Publix parking lot today asked me if I could give him 75 cents to help him buy a loaf of bread. He already had a couple of quarters in his hand. I said I'd gladly go with him inside and he could get the bread and I'd pay for it. So we went into Publix and he found "Buy one/get one free" bread and I paid. No big deal.

Like you said, I'd rather have bought someone bread who didn't need it than to not buy it for someone who did.

But that's just me. And you.

[renie408]

7. Things like that break my heart.

Can you imagine being that man and having to ask someone for money for food?

I always figure that even if the person is not actually homeless, the way they have to get money is to stand on a street corner and be pitied or patronized or worse and since I don't have to do that, I can spare a little bit here and there.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. You are doing the right thing...

if they are scammers it is on them, not you.

[IrishAyes]

4. So the long knives are out, the masks off for real. Have been a long time.

I'M SO GLAD HASSELBECK'S NO LONGER ON THE VIEW! Now she's in more suitable company for her evil greed. It would so serve those Faux people right for some of THEM to wind up homeless and find out what it feels like. The whole bloody lot are monsters.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. Faux Nooz We Deceive You Believe

They are outright propaganda, of course, but are they also engaged in a kind of MIND CONTROL? Are their viewers being brain-washed to go even farther to the extreme hard Right?!?!

All IMHO, of course.

[babylonsister]

8. Absolutely they are.

That's the whole point of faux. And I know quite a few people who swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

[Captain Stern]

9. Shit like this pisses me off.

It pisses me off because they take stuff that is true, and use it to justify false conclusions.

Are there people that fake homelessness to get free money, and not work?....YES there are! But that is not an argument for not helping people that need it. Their reasoning in sentence form would be: "Some people out there that are begging for food are faking it, so we shouldn't give anybody food."

The same goes with Food Stamps. There most definitely is fraud occurring. However, that is a reason to work to cut down on fraud...not defund the program. Their reasoning: "A lot of people are committing fraud, so we should end the program"

For me, it comes down to this: Unfortunately there will always be people out there that will try and take advantage, and get something for nothing (regardless of income level). We should do our best to put a stop to that. However, if our choice comes down to:

a) accept that there will be some fraud involved in our social programs while we help people that genuinely need it

or

b) eliminate fraud by ceasing the programs altogether

Then the right answer is "a". It's more important to help good people, than it is to punish bad people.

[Baitball Blogger]

10. What great Christian role models.

[yellowcanine]

12. John Stossel is an evil person who tries to make a virtue out of selfishness.

[Warpy]

13. Whistling as they walk past a graveyard

Some people say horrid things like this because they don't want to believe it could ever happen to them, even when they know they're only one to three paychecks away from it.

Stossel is just trash, always has been, always will be.

[advocatemikos]

14. What would Jesus do?

Many conservatives have chosen to live life's completely antithetical to the teaching of the Bible.
There is a movement to vilifiy the poor.Fox is a good example of sponsoring hate for not only the poor but the sick and elderly.
It doesn't take much to get a Fox viewer to hate. All most have to do is wake up in the morning.
What Stossell did was to instigate the next logical step in the very real war on the poor and I have no doubt there will be more violence, less help, and consequently, more suicides.
The opposite of what Jesus would do.
Happy Thanksgiving Fox.

[Spirochete]

15. There's no way in hell

that candy-ass walking foreskin could do that for 8 hours one day, let alone every day. Especially in December-January. And he's breathing up air the rest of us may need someday...

[babylonsister]

16. The lady in the picture really got to me. There but for the grace... nt