You need some spare change. Every little bit helps. Gotcha. I understand. I really do. I understand all too well...
Short version: Reagan emptied the asylums, shut off the social systems and (almost) freed the government from the burden of caring for the destitute, disabled and mentally ill...add a few decades of bleeding-heart liberalism and conservative extremism and you're done.
Now, as a resident of San Francisco, I'm on the front lines of the Hobo Invasion. I'm out on the street all the time, and I hear all about it. I hear these people bullshitting about how to scam the system, how to avoid work and cheat drug tests and avert responsibility for their own fucked-up actions or fate-induced scenarios. Yes, you look sad. Yes, your sign is clever. Yes, it's possible that I have some change. But it is NOT 'spare.' And you know what? I am NOT sympathetic. Tough life? Not your fault? I can think of a thousand things that weren't my fault, but screwed me anyway. DEAL WITH IT.
Every time some fucktard crackhead comes up and asks me for a dime, with his stupid spiel about needing a bus ticket, or some beer, or some other short-term solution to what is really a massive issue, I become even more deeply embittered toward the comically inadequate government systems and the microcosmically empathetic (yet macro-uesless) cultural responses to the scourge of HOMELESSNESS. Even the more lucid bums enrage me.
And you know what I do? I do the most viscerally cathartic thing I can: I take it out on the hobo. I tell him I'm trying to get a thousand dollars to buy a rocket launcher on the black market. I tell him I need a co-signer for a loan. I tell him that I just need another ten thousand dollars to make a down payment on a Louis Vuitton dog carrier. I ask him for a ride on his shopping cart. I tell him that I'm standing in the goddamn rain, too.
I mean, come on...If bums had any idea how broke I am, they would be giving ME spare change.
