Slashdot Mirror
Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving On Bitcoins
An anonymous reader writes "Wired profiles a homeless man who's supporting himself primarily through Bitcoin. Jesse Angle, a former network engineer, earns small amounts throughout the day by visiting various websites that pay him to look at ads. He then converts it to gift certificates and uses the certificates to buy food. '"It's a lot less embarrassing," he says. "You don't have to put yourself out there." And unlike panhandling in Pensacola, using an app like Bitcoin Tapper won't put him on the wrong side of the law. This past May, Pensacola — where Angle has lived since April — passed an ordinance that bans not only panhandling but camping on city property.' Angle learned about Bitcoin from a charity organization called Sean's Outpost that wanted something better than PayPal for accepting donations over the internet. The organization has even opened an outreach center paid for solely with Bitcoins. Founder Jason King said, 'Bitcoin beats the s#!% out of regular money, We've resonated so well with people because it's direct action. There's no chaff between donation and helping people.'"
eHobo?
They can pass all the laws they want, but until they do something about unemployment, mental illness, and drug abuse, people will continue begging for money and "camping" on city property. You can put them in jail (which, for some, would be a step up in living conditions), but then you'll spend a lot of money while doing nothing to address the actual problem.
Bitcoin has extra marketing value. People can donate Bitcoins rather than dollars, and they feel like they're somehow working outside "the system", as though the US government couldn't see or track what's going on. Really, the government can't track cash, either, but cash is old and familiar, where Bitcoin is new and exciting.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
My sister's husband's nephew is homeless but makes $4,500 a month just looking at Internet ads!!! You can too!!!
For more information go here:
http://www.makemoneywhilelivingunderthebridge.com
Indeed. This isn't a real homeless person -- the type who not only doesn't have a job, but doesn't have much chance of getting a job (any job). This is merely a person who refuses to work "beneath himself". We all know he could have a job at Wal-Mart, 7-11, or McDonald's within a few hours. He just refuses to do it.
Probably more of a failure in our mental health system. Also, young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
Maybe, or maybe not. If he has to do this, because he's unable to obtain any other employment even with heavy searching, then yes. If he prefers this to any other position or hasn't tried to find such a position, then no.
The biggest problem in charity is telling the difference between the two.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I saw large screen laptops, a smart phone, monster energy drink, bottled water, etc. in the articles photos. However, he was bummed out he lost power while playing a game on said large screen laptop. I guess it does suck being destitute in the US. Imagine your CoD game cut short. I will call BS on the poor homeless pity me routine.
Plus, sending cash doesn't tend to work well over the internet. It keeps clogging up my ethernet ports.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Yet another reason that internet advertising isn't the great value it is said to be. Those of us who are targeted by the ads are using abp and the ads are being watched by people doing so only for the cash.
Those who are paying him are using fradulent methods to inflate view counters, so they want to stay anonymous.
Have you compared the price of those energy drinks with a bag of apples or coffee?
I wouldn't call coffee nutritious in any way, but I know that I can get about 5 pounds of bananas, 1 pound of beans, or 2 pounds of rice for the price of one of those "energy drinks".
I don't respond to AC's.
expect a clampdown to get taxes from it, though it will be couched in verbiage of For The People they will demand government scrutiny and regulation.
It doesn't need to be. Americans are already legally obligated to report capital gains from trading in Bitcoins, and any income measured in Bitcoins must be reported as income, converted to dollars. If people aren't reporting such details, they're actually engaging in tax evasion, and can be caught just like any other evaders.
Having gone through the investigation process myself, it turns out it's not really that big of a deal. The IRS sends you a letter with a phone number, which you can call and talk to an agent about it. Being willing to correct mistakes is a big factor in resolving the issue quickly. If someone doesn't report Bitcoins because they don't realize they have to, they can just file an amendment to their return that reflects the correct figures, and send in a check to cover the difference. The IRS will check the return again, and determine whether they believe it or not. Repeat as necessary. Again, the key is to not be hostile towards the IRS. Believe it or not, they're people, too.
In my case, I got a notice saying the IRS thought I owed a few thousand dollars. I rechecked my paperwork, found that I owed about $400, and sent in an amendment and a check. They responded saying they didn't accept a certain deduction for which I had no verifiable paperwork. I sent in a signed letter attesting that it was valid. They then sent me a notice saying that they owed me a few hundred dollars, along with a check. The numbers all finally matched, so that was the end of it.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
is it a failure of the US social safety net that this man has to do this?
Of course not. He is earning a living. Why would it be better if he was on the dole? The safety net should be for people that can't work, not those who just don't want to.
So lets put you charity spending in a place where you cannot get tax deductions for it. Smart, way to stick it to the man!
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's quite possible that he could get such a job, though I don't know what the job market is like in Pensacola (I believe that's where the article indicated he was). That doesn't mean that he could afford rent somewhere - from the article, the main person being discussed became homeless initially after a multi-roommate apartment fell apart, and has bounced in and out of being able to afford a place since.
The more interesting part of the article is that some homeless are now starting to use Bitcoin as a way to get around not having a bank account (hard to do when you have no fixed address, I believe). This ties in well with many low-income folks having (disproportionally?) good smartphones - they can do it because that's the Internet access they can afford, and if they actually have a contract they may be getting decent phones because they can manage the installments.
fencepost
just a little off
There's a major difference between being capable of doing a job, and being able to hold the job. Mental illness isn't often evident in a quick interview, but after a few months on the job it may be obvious. He could then be fired for "poor attitude" or similar reason, especially if the employer doesn't understand the illness. After a few such events, his job history is full of short jobs that ended with him being fired, and that effectively ends his career.
IT specifically is a field full of outcasts. We have disproportionately high rates of several mental illnesses, especially on the autism spectrum. The people who never fit in anywhere else? They still don't fit in here, but it's okay because the rest of us don't, either.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
When I was younger - early teens to late teens, my father would volunteer with food banks, homeless shelters and with the handicapped (these would frequently overlap with the same people). This meant that I too would volunteer (whether I wanted to or not). Anyways, I would hear the same story a lot of the time about how through no fault of their own these people would lose their job, their house and cars and would have nowhere to go. They wanted help in the form of food, place to stay, etc..
In my experience maybe 1/10 of these people were genuinely down on their luck and looking for help to start over. They would do what it took to get back on their feet. The other 9 merely paid lip service to this. They actually preferred to live on the street and continue the lifestyle of not being a part of "normal" society. We'd help these people get into a program where they have food/shelter and a step by step system to start managing their lives and getting a job - they'd leave the next day because they cant' handle or don't want structure in their lives. They want to be "free" and "independent" but at the same time don't want to have to make an equal contribution to society to pay back these resources they use.
I look at this guy lounging outside a library with his laptop, drinking monster energy drinks and eating chicken pot pies. He's taking food stamps to support himself and yet he buys shitty unhealthy food that's way too expensive for someone on a restricted income. I got one thing to say to this guy and his friends, "Go fuck yourself!".
We all know he could have a job at Wal-Mart, 7-11, or McDonald's within a few hours.
You obviously don't know anyone who works in that segment of the economy. None of those places are "always hiring," and most have backlogs of resumes to go through. Worse, having a resume with a good job history on it is poison for low-end jobs, where people assume that you'll be jumping ship at first chance for a better job more in line with what you've done. Speaking from experience, no one wants someone with 7 years of development experience and a fresh law degree to deliver their pizzas.
Plus, my friend who does work for Wal-mart? He'd be homeless too if he couldn't live with him Mom based on what they pay him in his eternally part-time position.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A few bitcoin donations helped me make my mortgage payment last month, and I have a little left over. Things are picking up but it's still really tight. I had to have emergency dental surgery (blessed wisdom teeth) too... There is a point that you reach when you're desperate that you still feel the shame of begging, but the need overwhelms it.
I'll just leave this here: 17S6drtGpJXer6qA5V6XhP3snasGWANBjc
For what? To sit at home and watch TV?
I have no problem with the concept that everyone needs (deserves?) a basic income provided by society. I have a huge problem with the concept that they do not, in turn, owe society for that.
Give them a basic salary and then choose what menial position the Bureau of Suggested (Forced) Labor deems is best for their skills. Maybe that is doing stupid shit on the internet, I don't know, nor care, but they damn well should be doing SOMETHING.
Giving everyone 25k a year (okay, 40k a year in some places) to live, with no expectation that they will do anything other than convert oxygen to CO2 and reproduce is rather short sighted insomuch as it ignores the vast laziness of so very, very many people.
Just another ignorant American.
He's not "making" a living though. According to the article, he's actually living on food stamps and using bitcoin to supplement. Since he's not paying into the system, he's more of a drain than a benefit. I also assume he's doing it by choice and doesn't want to do anything more with his technical knowledge. Maybe he's just waiting for a position in management.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Absolutely. All we have to do is take it from those that are earning the money, and give it to those that aren't. If 50% of the society works really hard and makes a bunch of money, but we just pay 100% of society equally, it'll all work out.
Of course, that 50% number is going to dwindle in both number and quality of output as you remove any and all reward for their work. "Atta boy" will work for some, but I think the math is going to fail on that one in the long term.
To put this differently; I have a cousin who doesn't do shit. At all. She's a worthless drag on society with 5 children. I work my ass off to the tune of 60-70 hours a week, every week, sometimes quite a bit more than that. If she and I are suddenly paid the same, I am staying home and playing XBOX, fuck this work stuff.
Just another ignorant American.
Opening a US bank account generally requires a permanent address and proof of [traditional] employment. Not something the homeless are likely to get. Even an account established pre-homelessness likely had some minimum balance required to keep it open. Keeping that last $100 or so locked up to maintain an account when you’re hungry isn’t a choice I think many would make.
He doesn't pay for internet. He uses free public wifi in a park. He mainly survives off of food stamps but uses the bitcoin revenue to supplement that.
I seriously doubt he pays a phone bill unless it's prepaid, certainly not for data. Bitcoin doesn't require a bank account (which often charges a monthly fee if you have too little money) and people can't beat you up and take your bitcoins.
And exactly how is selling your laptop to maybe afford one more month of rent going to help your living situation? Then you're just homeless without a laptop.
I think he has proved that keeping the laptop is worth its weight in food as a potential income source.
I don't understand why people always hate on the homeless. Is it so impossible to imagine a situation where you're down on your luck and fall through the cracks? Not everyone has a safety net of family and friends. I almost feel like the idea scares people so much that they get reflexively angry about as a form of denial.
"It's impossible! This could obviously never happen to me and so these people must be scammers, scum, or addicts!"
I'm not sure what to think... I'm in Pensacola, and I'm seeing job listings for IT personnel that by all rights should be a minimum of 60K (VMWare Hypervisor and all other IT tasks, including database admin.)... Offering 30.
I had a sucky sig.
No... the real left is thinking that a basic income guarantee is becoming very close to feasible. Perhaps not yet, but we are getting close to the point where the labor generated by people who work for either self fulfillment or access to luxury goods and services can produce enough wealth to provide every household with a basic income capable of covering rent, food and basic utilities.
Not even we here in Norway which is about commie-red by US standards goes that far, in fact we just took one baby step away from socialism in the last election. The problem is quite simply that if people don't feel it pays off to work they won't. If they put the "basic income" too low, the poor can't actually afford to use it. It'll only become a cheaper way for the middle class to take a year off as many people dream of doing to fulfill some sort of self-realization but find too expensive. If they raise it too close to a low-end job, who really want to struggle eight hours a day in a dead end, physically demanding job when they can bum around and play video games? Because obviously we'd have to tax the shit out of people to pay for all this, so it's not like your pay would become your current pay + your basic income, that'd require us to create tons of money from nothing.
Already we're seeing certain trends in welfare abuse, not directly fraud as such but people who try very hard to get disabilities claims or to keep their unemployment claims by not being very employable. Statistically we know these trends aren't real because we don't have the sickest population in Europe and our working conditions are very gentle compared to many other countries yet we have one of the highest disability ratios in the western world. It just doesn't add up. These are the kind of people who are already looking to get out of the job market, they'd all take basic income and never return. Recently we've had some changes to the pension system where you could elect to retire earlier for lower pensions and lots of people got out at 62 instead of 67. Really, all the signs point to that if people can get a living paycheck without working, damn many would get the hell out.
Of course, the naive say that for each one that takes a year off a position opens up for someone else. That's not how it works, businesses aren't going to hire a dropout who is also now on basic income and probably happy with it just because they lost someone, they're not that desperate to keep the headcount up. If we decrease the talent pool, the jobs are just likely to disappear or move overseas. I think such a system would belly flop miserably but I'd be the first one on it, I'd see it as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to take a year off at a reasonable cost. I'm thinking I'm not alone in that respect, good luck replacing all of us from the ranks of the currently unemployed.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
As a single young man I can say that single young men are last on the list for just about everything.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
The problem with that is it encourages weird subcultures and cults to try to overbreed us all and take over the country without needing to support their members. They can grow their rural compounds without limit with the ever-increasing government income based on population growth.
Conservatives have a ton of bad ideas, hysterical beliefs, and problematic behaviors, but I think they're right that if you give people a free ride, many will contribute nothing but mouths to feed and violence, and will be a drain on us all.
I'd love to free up people's time and make having a job stop being a life and death situation, but if you give people the potential for a free ride, you start needing to add all kinds of regulation to stop abuse, and I see it needing to go as far as restricting parenthood to productive people, so maybe we're better off with the current situation.
We've made some progress with the ACA, so jobless people don't have to die in the streets, and I think we should be happy with these small steps. Reforming prisons so they rehabilitate prisoners would be a good next step. We don't need to turn our whole culture and economy upside down with a completely socialist system at this time.
That comparison holds in the case where someone has a low income but at least has a home or some sort of environment where cooking is possible.
If you’re living on the streets, where are you going to cook your ground beef or eggs? Where are you going to refrigerate them so that you can take advantage of the lower per-meal cost spread over the course of several days? That type of economy of scale is only possible with a certain minimum level of capital. Namely that required to maintain or maintain access to a kitchen, IE a “home”.
Honestly, caffeinated sugar solution is a subjectively “good” choice if you’re broke and hungry. Granted, it lacks in protein, so long-term it sucks. Short-term, though, it gives you energy (sugar) and a stimulant boost (caffeine) which will tend to make you feel less hungry. You’ll be digesting your own organs before long, but at least you won’t feel “starving”.
You’d be better off trying to find some pre-cooked or raw-consumable, shelf-stable (no refrigeration required) protein, but I’m honestly at a loss to name any complete proteins that fit those requirements that are cheaper than a McWhatever...
>To put this differently; I have a cousin who doesn't do shit. At all. She's a worthless drag on society with 5 children.
>I work my ass off to the tune of 60-70 hours a week, every week, sometimes quite a bit more than that. If she and I are suddenly paid the same,
>I am staying home and playing XBOX, fuck this work stuff.
I don't think anyone is suggesting you'd be paid the same. I haven't seen anyone suggesting that we ban work. In a free basic income system, people would still be able to earn more money, they just wouldn't have a miserable life if they're poorly adapted to our current society. Your "worthless" cousin might have some more money in her pocket, but you can still make widgets to sell to her to improve your situation. A purely communist country would be just as bad as a completely capitalist one. You always need balance between a free market and social services.
Even if everyone was paid the same, which I think is a terrible idea, many of us are smart, capable people who enjoy and take great satisfaction from our work.
Yes, holding down a job is tough when you are struggling with things like depression or any other mental illness. I compare it juggling with an extra ball added. While we are all juggle with ups and downs in life, I go into severe funks and cut myself off from the world.
I have been fighting it for years and it makes it hard to concentrate. I also take things really hard when I don't know something or can't figure out something right away. So people think I just don't care sometimes when the opposite is actually true.
While I can hold a job and went to a good school...its pretty middling work and I had poor grades. It makes me very frustrated and angry when I look back at this because I lost a good chunk of my youth sitting around waiting for the world to come crashing down on me.
My experience has been that hard work and really investing in therapy has paid the most dividends. While I do take medicines like Prozac, and it does help, being totally honest with a strong group of people (led by a very competent counselor) about my situation and past gets me away from the crushing isolation I feel sometimes. The sad thing is, the whole mental health system in this country (US) puts almost all its stock to treat illness it doesn't really understand with medicines that they don't really seem to understand. Also the US has a rapidly deteriorating safety net and more and more people that could be treated and put back into circulation as productive members of society are just falling through the cracks of this country.
I don't mean to be too political, but I have taken food stamps at one time and I can't believe the politicians are trying to cut it off.
It will cost more to supervise someone who does not want to work than it will to automate the job or hire someone productive.
No it doesn't. If their job is to do an automated task, the task can have a built in quality control. If they don't meet a minimum standard, then they don't get paid.
Example: My wife runs a educational website where teachers/parents can upload content. But before kids can access the content, it must be reviewed for inappropriate content (porn, profanity, etc). She uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to hire workers to screen the content. 90% of the content is new, but 10% is randomly inserted content that has already been screened, and is known to be either be either appropriate or inappropriate. If the Turkers don't handle these tests properly, then their work is discarded, and they don't get paid .
The workers she hires are from India, Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. But never from America. I see no reason that welfare recipients shouldn't be put to work on tasks like this instead of munching potato chips in front of the TV.
young men are last on the list when shelters are overcrowded.
As a single young man I can say that single young men are last on the list for just about everything.
Wait'll you're a single old man, and we'll talk. Oh yeah, I'll be dead then.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Give them a basic salary and then choose what menial position the Bureau of Suggested (Forced) Labor deems is best for their skills. Maybe that is doing stupid shit on the internet, I don't know, nor care, but they damn well should be doing SOMETHING.
Finding a job is, itself, a full time job. What you're proposing is a bad idea, because once you get into a workfare system, it's damned near impossible to get out of it because you don't have the time to either upgrade your skills or search for a better job. Meanwhile, every time it's been implemented to date, it works out to paying *significantly* less than minimum wage.
Some people will abuse the system. People will always find a way to abuse the system. But the system should *not* be set up to penalize everybody for the actions of a few, especially not when setting it up that way ends up making it impossible to get out of the system.
With proper mental health care, a great deal of those people could be medicated, counseled and otherwise treated to the point where they could become contributing members of society, and the ones that are too far gone for that, could be off the streets and getting proper care somewhere.
We have free/public health care in Canada, as well as public drug plans like the Trillium plan here in Ontario, which can offer up to 100% drug coverage depending on your income level. We still have homeless people with mental illness. We probably have less than in the US, but you can only help people who want to be helped, and some people will always choose to live on the street. (some people will end up there because they don't realize they have a choice, but that is a different discussion entirely)
Let me ask you: if you had a friend who you knew was sleeping in a carport, wouldn't you offer them a bed - or at least whatever space you do have? If your answer is "it depends on", then many of the things you are about to say tend to be traits common in someone with mental illness.
Is it really that simple, though? Sure if I learned a friend of mine was homeless I would offer them a couch to crash on until they got back on their feet but this is also only possible due to my lifestyle. If I had a family to worry about, this might not be such an easy commitment to make, let alone the added cost of taking care of a homeless person no matter who they are with potentially no foreseeable fix in sight.