Thursday, September 25, 2008

Evidence from the Homeless that the World is Getting Better

Last night I walked by a homeless man listening to an iPod Nano while holding out a cup for collections. The 3 thoughts that ran through my mind
  1. The world is really becoming a better place to live for everybody.
  2. Where does he charge the batteries?
  3. That's not a good strategy to elicit sympathy.
#3 is so obvious that he must have truly been poor, because someone faking their desperate state would not make that mistake. You may now reference the counter argument to thought #3 in Tyler Cowen's final chapter of Discover Your Inner Economist on "How to Save the World."
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You might want to check this link out: http://tinyurl.com/66n6ot

It turns out the correlation between panhandlers and homeless people is not as high as we would normally believe.

This is a fascinating article on panhandling strategies and motivations.

9:20 AM
Matt E. Ryan said...

I believe part of the $700 billion bailout is to provide iPod charging stations for the homeless, no?

9:53 AM

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