But this is the kind of trouble that theory gets you into. To refuse to help people that need help because of the principle that if you don't help them, the govt might, might be theoretically correct, but it doesn't feel right.
I give money to the homeless and good tips to waiters and hotel cleaning help. I do it because I can spare it and they need it.
One of the women I most hated in graduate school became the publisher and editor of a literary rag of some renown. She wrote a substantial essay in it to justify why she refused to give money to a homeless man that she passed on the sidewalk, walking with her son. I thought it was typical of her.
I also know an extraordinarily nice guy who refuses to give money to the homeless because he believes they're secretly rich.
I say: keep it simple. Make kindness your theory. My grandmother taught me that. She was dirt poor. But I cannot remember a single time she walked by a beggar without giving them something.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- Bill Bartlett makes some comments about tips that I think are pretty yhoughtless. By his logic, I should never give a homeless person money because this lets the government off the hook. Or my father shouldn't have bought his nephews and nieces shoes as that would have sent the wrong message to the coal mine operators who paid my uncle so poorly. Not to mention that giving a cleaning woman, who is often an undocumented worker without access even to the protections of the labor laws, some money or a coat, somehow means that she will be less likely to be paid a living wage. Bill, your presumed purity of politics masks some real ignorance of the ways of the world.
But maybe you're just a cheap fuck! Waiters here just hate people like you who say, the custom in our country is not to tip. When in Rome . . . ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk