License the homeless

Under a new ordinance passed by the Oklahoma City Council, homeless people who display “will work for food” signs in Oklahoma will now have to get a business license from the government first. According to an Associated Press story, bartering for food without such a license will subject the Oklahoma City homeless person to as much as $750 in punitive fines. Homeless people wishing to trade food for services must first fill out forms and pay $30 for the license, plus $17.50 “to cover administrative overhead and the cost of a criminal background check.”

“We’re not trying to prevent, necessarily, this activity, but we do want to make sure the individuals involved are decent and are truthful to their word,” said Oklahoma municipal attorney Bill West. A very valid point indeed!

When you think about it, the Oklahoma City government really ought to be commended for this novel idea. All of these years, the Oklahoma homeless population have been unfairly getting away with an illegal activity: doing business without so much as a government-sponsored business license. Imagine the sheer audacity of their repugnant criminal activity: depriving the government of much needed homeless licensing revenues.

After all, as the Oklahoma municipal government recently realized, begging for food is not a constitutional right; it is a privilege granted by a generous government, for a nominal licensing fee, of course.

Besides, as Oklahoma City attorney Bill West correctly emphasized, without a business license and a criminal background check, how will the people of Oklahoma really know if the begging/bartering homeless person is really homeless or not? Indeed, for all we know, the bartering homeless person might actually be perpetrating a fraud–a most deceitful hoax on naive homelessness service consumers. That is, for all the non-homeless person knows, the ostensible homeless person could really be holding down a decent job while moonlighting with lucrative street solicitations on the side–tax free and without so much as paying for a business licensing fee, I might add.

It is high time that federal, state and local governments across America finally put a stop to this outrageous homeless abuse. Imagine the additional revenues the Internal Revenue Service could be collecting from this vast new, previously untaxed, market for homeless services.

And make no mistake about it, these homeless people do provide a very valuable service to society. First of all, they allow the rest of us to feel a lot better about ourselves. In times of grief, frustration and existential despair, they allow us to triumphantly declare: “Hey, at least I am not that bad.”

Second, they provide a vital spiritual release, to assuage our guilt and cleanse our consciences. They give us an opportunity to bestow a handout–a cathartic, enriching act of kindness, amidst the flux and fury of life.

For offering these invaluable social services and benefiting from a handout or two, these homeless folks should be taxed, regulated and controlled in order to protect consumers from fraud, fund valuable public service projects (such as infrastructure development and funding for the arts), and ensure overall homeless service satisfaction.

To update the old Tony Bennett hit, folks, as an old “Ogee from Muskogee” (Merle Haggard), I left my heart in Oklahoma.