You ever stand at a bus stop for 20 minutes across the street from a highway with an exit ramp that has a light at the street?
They walk up and down the exit ramp as it has a red light. Walking car to car. Roughly 1 in 5 give money. The light lasts about 2 minutes. Which means every 4 minutes he has a new set of cars exiting the highway. That means there’s 15 light cycles in a 60 minute time period, assuming the city doesn’t have automated changes at set intervals (some lights do).
So lets say he gets 1 in 5. And lets set the number real low. Lets say he only gets $3 on average every light change.
That’s $45 dollars an hour. Which is actually shooting low when you consider people like my aunt. Who gave the guy $20. Those people aren’t the norm. But they exist, and would bring up the average easily.
Then there’s other times I’d see several light changes where nobody gave him anything.
Point is, $40 for that type of a scam, with no overhead, no expenses, no payroll, nothing, is pretty low. It’s probably more, but I don’t have exact numbers. I just see him whenever I catch a certain bus.
The fact that he has a nice car makes me think he either has a second passive income, or I’m WAY undershooting it.
Because I’m pretty sure those nice sports cars are like 100k. Even $40/hr I don’t think would cover that.
dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
I’ve known a number of homeless folks, and not a single one has made anywhere near that flying a sign, but plenty of them have had everything they owned trashed by the cops, who also confiscated any cash because the homeless folks “couldn’t explain where they got it.”