I do. I’ve not seen anyone who isn’t a reddit-brained lib argue you shouldn’t, though I have never gone looking for such arguments, and more than just give them some money when I can, I try to treat them like a human, to say hello, to wish them well, say sorry if I can’t offer them anything that day, etc.

If you had no income and no place to live or even safely keep belongings, wouldn’t you want people to help you out when you asked and not just avert their eyes and pretend you weren’t a fellow human?

I guess if I saw a parent and kids out together on a school day that would set off some alarm bells but I’ve never seen that personally. It seems like a pretty contrived excuse not to help, honestly. Maybe there’s some cycle that could happen if the person is always coming back to you specifically for money but even then… its hard to argue you should do nothing.

liberals hate panhandling because it reminds them how inhumane their vaunted “end of history”, “best possible system” society actually is and forces them to confront it, so they try to justify it by saying that the homeless/desperate are like that because they’re just inherently worse people and that helping them won’t make a difference. They are wrong. individual charity won’t end poverty and homelessness, but it does help the individual, not merely enable them to continue “choosing” to be homeless or whatever nonsense liberals say

The very same people that resort to begging, or even theft to stay afloat, will mostly gladly share generously if they manage to land in an environment where resources aren’t scarce and their very survival doesn’t depend on hoarding and guarding whatever they can get their hands on