This cartoon is by me and Becky Hawkins.
Becky writes:
In some circles, Portland’s claim to fame, aside from “burned down by Antifa in 2020,” is the large number of people living on the streets. I think everyone agrees that housing is a major issue here, whatever solutions they support.
This cartoon was inspired by an anecdote I told Barry during a drawing session. I was getting lunch downtown and a food truck owner scolded me for giving a dollar to a guy on the corner. The owner said that if you keep giving money to homeless people, they’ll keep coming around, like he was talking about stray cats or wild bears. He asked why I did that, and when I asked “Do you really want to know?” he said yes.
I gave my personal reasons for giving money sometimes. A couple of acquaintances were homeless as teens. A dollar or two can provide the invaluable ability to get out of the rain for a bit and warm up with a hot drink. It feels good to know that I have a few bucks to spare.
I also pointed out that even if that guy got a job today (bypassing the application and interview process), his first paycheck would be up to two weeks away. He would presumably need to eat something and sleep somewhere in the interim. And even if the guy didn’t need to buy food or clothing with his first paycheck, the check wouldn’t cover the first and last month’s rent plus a deposit on an apartment (again, bypassing the process of searching and applying, being the first to apply for the open unit, and overcoming any barriers to getting his application approved). So when people say “Get a job,” it’s not something that will instantly cause a person to become housed and have their daily needs met.
The food truck owner seemed to understand that. I don’t know if I changed his views on giving people cash on the street. He’s probably still annoyed when people ask his customers for money. But it felt like a productive conversation.
A note on the drawing: Panel 4 is based on Moorea, an island in French Polynesia. I worked as a cruise ship musician right after college, and Moorea was the most ridiculously beautiful tropical vacation spot that I could think of.
Barry writes:
Thank you folks, as always, for supporting these cartoons! It’s greatly appreciated.
I really like this one, partly because it’s not the norm for me – there’s not really a punchline per se, it’s just over-the-top sarcasm.
My point in this cartoon isn’t to criticize anyone for not giving money to panhandlers – there are a zillion ways to give money, after all, and no human can do them all. (For purposes of this argument, I’m not counting Elon Musk as human.) Since we can’t do everything, I think it makes sense for each person to give in any way that feel legitimate and safe for them.
But moving beyond I don’t want to give to beggers personally to I actively discourage other people from giving is another thing altogether.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four panels.
PANEL 1
Two well-dressed women and a panhandler wearing a blue knit hat are on a sidewalk; the panhandler is sitting on a piece of cardboard, with a cardboard sign saying “please give,” and his dog napping next to him. One of the women is handing him a dollar.
WOMAN 1: If you give him money, he won’t have any incentive to find a job.
WOMAN 2: It’s only a dollar.
PANHANDLER: Thank you.
PANEL 2
The panhandler, tossing his “please give” sign aside, grins hugely as he stares at the dollar.
PANHANDLER: Hee hee
PANEL 3
Still grinning and staring at the dollar bill, the panhandler walks past a little grocery. Someone in the shop doorway points to him and calls out.
SHOP OWNER: Hey, you — want a job?
PANHANDLER: Hee hee hah!
PANEL 4
The panhandler and his dog are enjoying the waters of some island paradise, floating on inflatable rings. He’s now wearing a bathing suit and sunglasses, although he’s still wearing his blue knit hat. A little floating table next to him has a drink with a tiny umbrella in it.
He’s still holding the dollar bill, which he’s gazing out with satisfaction.
PANHANDLER: Aaaah…
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is obscure cartoonists’ lingo for unimportant but funny details.
In panel 3, one of the posters in the grocery window shows a canned drink with a skull on the label.
In panel 4, there’s a rubby ducky wearing sunglasses floating in the water next to them. The dog is wearing a new diamond-studded dog collar. There’s a little table floating next to the dog with a dog bone in it.
I know from experience that people will accuse this cartoon of being a strawman – so to preempt that a bit, here are some real things that real people have really said. (Really!)
“For every dollar that we give to a beggar, the more lucrative we make begging and, comparatively, the less lucrative we make working. This is bad, for we want people to work, not beg.”
“[Giving money] provides an incentive for them and others to take up begging, rather than seeking more sustainable work.”
“Giving money to beggars … can create a cycle of dependency that keeps individuals from seeking long-term solutions and perpetuates the problem.”
“Giving money reinforces begging as a means of income, perpetuating a cycle of dependency and discouraging efforts to seek employment…”
I might do the same thing as this guy if I also had an infinitely self-replicating dollar. Or maybe it works more like that omni-document from Dr. Who?
And of course this “incentive” only applies to poor people: Rich people who already have enough to live off of supposedly somehow work really hard to create jobs and go to Mars.
If one assumes that a person is making their money, including enough money to have no incentive to “work”, by spare changing on the street, then isn’t that their job? It’s harder work than I would ever like to do. Having to approach people to get enough money to avoid starving and receiving maybe $1 for each time someone who donates sounds to me like a hell just this side of telemarketing. Also, I really wish I had enough money to be able to casually drop enough money on every homeless person I meet to allow them to take an exotic vacation.
I gave a woman asking for money $1 today and she did not immediately get up chuckling and move to a resort. Maybe it was a defective dollar? I mean it was only a US dollar. Maybe it would have worked with a Canadian $1.
I’m a pretty soft touch when it comes to street people.
Having homeless people hanging out around his food truck is probably not great for business. OTOH, I bet it inspires at least some people to part with a buck or two, and after a few of those they can buy something from the guy in the food truck; I figure that’s what would draw them to the truck.
People are afraid that if they give a beggar money they’ll use it to buy drugs or booze. I got hit up outside a McDonald’s once. I told the guy “I won’t give you money. Want me to buy you something?” He came in with me and was quite happy with an Egg McMuffin, hash brown and coffee. I’m not clear how happy the people running the place were with having the guy sit in there, but he had their food in front of him so too damn bad for them.
bcb:
Well, clearly at least one does. God knows Musk doesn’t have to work another day in his life and hasn’t had to for some time,. He could have cashed out Tesla and SpaceX 3 or 4 years ago. I figure he wants to live at least long enough to land Starship on Mars. He’s not an Ellison or Zuckerberg buying a half-billion dollar yacht. Although he does have 14 kids by 3 or 4 women, so it’s not like he doesn’t take SOME time for recreation.
Dianne:
Usually I think of a job as something that produces a good or service of economic value that you exchange with your employer – or customer – for money. The only thing a beggar provides you with is a blessing/karma, which has no economic value, although I would still say it has value.
“People are afraid that if they give a beggar money they’ll use it to buy drugs or booze.”
Yep, people love to infantilise, dehumanise and patronise the homeless, it’s true.
The “work” Musk is doing right now is destroying jobs. Literally. That’s DOGE’s purpose. They’re not even pretending it’s about “efficiency” any more. The world would be better off if Musk had jumped into a Space X rocket* and gone to Mars.
*One of the old ones, designed by competent engineers, not one of the ones he designed that keep blowing up. I’m just trying to get him to leave Earth, not life.
I agree that it has value, but doubt the claim of no economic value. Happy people are more productive. Also, people with money buy things, so a beggar with money can take on the role of consumer.
Doolittle: I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.” But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two gentlemen, not to play that game on me. I’m playing straight with you. I ain’t pretending to be deserving. I’m undeserving; and I mean to go on being undeserving. I like it; and that’s the truth. Will you take advantage of a man’s nature…? Is five pounds unreasonable?
* * *
Higgins: I suppose we must give him a fiver.
Pickering: He’ll make a bad use of it, I’m afraid.
Doolittle: Not me, Governor, so help me I won’t. Don’t you be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a penny of it left by Monday: I’ll have to go to work same as if I’d never had it. It won’t pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think it’s not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better.
George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (1912), Act II
Hah!
Fun as it is, it looks to me like this George Shaw, whoever he is, is basically writing My Fair Lady fanfic.
* snort! *
He’s not the same as you and me;
He doesn’t dig poetry.
He’s so unhip that
When you say Dylan, he thinks you’re talkin’ about Dylan Thomas–
Whoever he was.
The man ain’t got no culture….
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LOL Pretty funny Amp!
Dianne:
Eliminating unnecessary jobs to focus on the actual core functions of the Federal government is the epitome of increasing efficiency. Yes, there have been numerous cases where jobs that actually ARE necessary were cut. From what I understand most of those people have been offered their jobs back. So Musk is attempting to increase the efficiency of government in an inefficient manner. Not great, I agree. I wish it were. As I’ve said before it’s a scream test, because Musk and Trump know the clock is ticking on how much time they have to do this.
Of course, there’s a lot of disagreement on what the actual core functions of the Federal government are, or should be. But enough people agreed with Trump on that score that he won the election, so he gets to use the power of the Presidency to make that call as far as Congress and the Supremes will let him.
Everyone else gets to support or oppose him as they choose, although it looks as though vandalism and arson will be dealt with more harshly than it was under the Biden administration.
With regards to the courts, I think we’re about to see the Supremes tell lower courts that their rulings will only apply to their District or Circuit, and that only the Supremes get to make rulings with nationwide effect. Years ago, Justice Thomas mentioned this issue in one of his rulings, basically inviting someone to file suit about it. No one picked it up, but it looks like Trump is going to. A double-edged sword, as we won’t always have a Republican in the Presidency, but we’ll see.
You would expect “efficiency” to result in lower spending, right? According to the Economist government spending is up compared to 2024. Certainly, money is being taken from programs that prevent neonatal mortality, death due to AIDS, and nutrition to fund Starlink and other Musk ventures, but the total amount spent is higher. Not so efficient.
Whatever gave you that idea? Yes, they rehired or tried to rehire a few people who were RIFed, but the 10,000 that RFK decided were irrelevant? None of them have been rehired, despite his babbling about 20% of the dismissals being mistakes.
Some of the people fired by our ever-efficient DOGE: The people who handle payroll. (No, civil servants won’t actually keep working if you don’t pay them, but several absolute saints did agree to do the payroll for the last pay period, despite being RIFed.) Most of the center for tobacco products, because I guess tobacco addiction is no longer a problem. A number of people at the VA, because everyone knows that the VA is chronically overstaffed. Hired by Musk: a bunch of 19-25 year olds with no experience in government and who do not have security clearance at GS 15/10 (basically, the top they can legally be paid.) Needless to say, this is money worse than wasted, because it costs money to clean up after them.
High treason and corruption, OTOH, are apparently no longer crimes. But then again, the Republicans always were soft on crime.
Not that I have any idea why you think arson and vandalism weren’t dealt with under Biden. I mean, they’re not federal crimes, unlike the massive COI of basically everyone in the Trump government, so it wasn’t really Biden’s business, but it’s not as though arsonists were just getting away with it in 2024. Though torching a Tesla wasn’t considered a federal crime. Dumb, illegal, and dangerous, yes, but not a special crime against a business person who has managed to get himself accepted into the government without being elected or appointed and confirmed by Congress for any role in the government.
I can’t wait to hear what RonF has to say about the efficiency of fascism when the Social Security checks (retirement, disability, survivor’s benefits) stop going out in a few months.
Or what he has to say about Musk’s claims that they’re going to rewrite the entire SSA system in a modern language (it’s currently tens of millions of lines of COBOL) in 5 months. I’m moderately certain that RonF has enough of a background in IT to know what a spectacular failure anything they put in production in that timeframe would be.
@Jacqueline+Squid+Onassis: Since the administration said that only people who were cheating would get upset if their checks didn’t get there on time, I’m sure Ron won’t be in the least bit annoyed.
As far as the SSA system being in COBOL, I don’t know for certain, but my guess is that there were competent programmers working on modernizing the SSA system over a realistic time period with reasonable safeguards that DOGE fired.
Because under non-fascists, it is true that the government does these sorts of things slowly (see tens of millions of lines of COBOL in 2025), but that’s because making mistakes could destroy lives, put finances at risk, or at the very best inconvenience and annoy millions. The current admin has no such scruples. Move fast and break things, even if or maybe especially if those “things” are people’s lives and livelihoods.
Is government efficiency hampered by excessive bureaucracy and needless organizational inertia? Sure, I can buy that. I’ve worked for companies with government contracts, I can attest to the needless hoops we needed to jump through.
But I doubt the right solution is to fire government employees en masse, with little to no specific reasoning or oversight, at the discretion of inexperienced unelected outsiders who clearly have no idea what they’re breaking. This is not a good faith effort to improve government efficiency, this is a combination of ideological purge and endemic incompetence.
It’s really not. Government isn’t divided neatly into “good workers” and “useless workers,” and so all you have to do is discover who the useless ones are and fire them. That’s how Musk seems to see it – but Musk’s approach is childish and ignorant.
And many of the harms caused by firing without intelligence or thought will make our government less efficient, as well as causing real harm. Some people will die.
To give a specific example: When I first moved to Oregon, the state had a rule against government organizations replacing computers if the old ones were still able to perform basic functions. The idea was to save taxpayer money from wasteful government spending.
And as a result, anything that had to be done with the city took longer than it needed to, because the entire government was being run off of fifteen year old devices that took minutes to do what then current technology could have done in seconds. It was incredibly inefficient – but the rule was put in place by elected ignoramuses trying to save money. And there was no one you could have fired to fix that problem, because it wasn’t caused by bad employees doing unnecessary jobs.
I’ve been reading about this today; it’s interesting stuff.
I think that technically, you may be misstating the question. Even if Trump get’s his way, the limits will not be geographic. For example, if a district court in Washington orders the Federal Government not to deport Lucy Exampleton, and Exampleton flies to New York, the Federal Government would still be forbidden from grabbing Exampleton in NY and deporting her. The ruling applies to the party who sued – in this case, Exampleton – nationwide, not just in the district or circuit where the court is located. I don’t think Trump is trying to claim otherwise.
The actual question is, do a district court’s rulings protect everyone, or do the rulings only protect the parties to the specific lawsuit? And can the courts issue rulings that apply to more people than just the parties to the case, if that’s necessary to provide “complete relief” to the parties?
(The tern the courts use for these orders – “nationwide injunctions” – gives the false impression that the issue is just one of geography. But it’s a term of art, not a literal term.)
And the bigger question is, if the executive branch breaks the law, is the only court that can provide relief the Supreme Court?
This is one of those issues that tends to make hypocrites of everyone (myself very much included). During the Obama and Biden administrations, I was several times pissed off by right wing judges’ use of nationwide injunctions to styme the executive’s powers. But I’m grateful nationwide injunctions exist now.
On the whole, even if right-wing cranks and bigots in judges’ robes sometimes issue bad nationwide injunctions, I don’t think we should decrease the checks on executive power. The executive has been getting more and more powerful, and mitigating that is important.
A relevant quote from law professor Amanda Frost: