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Personally, it's my policy to give money to anyone who asks unless they are drunk. I know that a lot of beggars are simply trying to take advantage of people like me, but on the other hand there is a lot of people who really need help. I'm not in a position to sort them out, and I'm most certainly not going to judge them. If I'm better off then they are, why not give a few $?

One more thing. Sometimes I see a lot of people asking for money for a "bus ticket" or "gas" because "their car broke down" I always tell them that I know they are full of shit, and that they should change their line. they will still get few $, as I prefer that they ask for money instead of robbing someone else.

And in all honesty, do beggars do anything different than your average sales person? Instead of a product they are selling their poverty. If they good at doing that why not reward them :)

I've done it a couple of times. One guy asked for deodorant and food, so I walked with him to 7-11 to get deodorant, then across the street to McDonalds. And like the GP, you can talk with them along the way. Sometimes they don't want food. One homeless lady in my neighborhood (who recently passed away) refused the coffee we bought for her one cold morning. My wife had a few conversations with her and discovered that she like writing in notebooks--she had lots of them. So we bought her a few new notebooks and pencils. She didn't want food or help from anyone.

Why draw the line at family and friends? It's a natural place to draw the line. I think if you study psychology and the evolution of the human mind that's pretty obvious.

Additionally if you want to reason in a framework of debts, then you probably owe the most to your friends and family. You owe your entire existence directly to your parents -- it's hard to top that! Might as well stop there and just accept you have some unquantifiable amount of direct debt to the family who raised and protected you and the friends who spent time with you freely as opposed to doing something else. You can try to talk of indirect debts owed to and by "society" etc. but those quickly become spaghetti and in my opinion nonsensical. They're diffused and for some groups entirely non-existent, their lifespan is indefinite (you owe a part of your existence to all the warriors on whatever side of the conflicts your victorious (where victory means they could reproduce or their existing children were spared) ancestors took part in!), it's usually very unclear just how much is owed to whom, if it's even quantifiable, and how or if one can repay, and if you allow counterfactuals (like indirectly owing part of your existence to anyone who has had ill-thoughts toward your mother while she was pregnant or you during your life, but who didn't act on them) it becomes ever more ridiculous. And this is just as a reasoning framework -- can such a ridiculous construct actually motivate people to donate to some charity feeding starving kids in Africa and generate warm-fuzzy feelings of similar magnitude to gifting and helping out friends and family?

I think this is best handled by local government. They can organize this better than individuals. They can provide the professional support and care that is necessary. The city I live in provides homeless people with a place to sleep, they provide them with warm meals, a place to shower and wash clothes. They also provide clean syringes and anti-conception, they provide books and newspapers to read, facilities to exercise. Maybe most important, they provide advice and counselling and give people a way to get things back on track, if they want to take it.

The national government provides them with monthly income (welfare). Which I will agree isn't much, but should cover the absolute basic necessities, especially combined with all the other help available. The local government also helps people to actually receive this money, to prevent the bureaucratic nonsense of homeless people needing to supply an address to apply for welfare.

To accomplish all of this, we pay a relatively high tax. But many people still give quite a bit of money to their favorite charities.

Of course, all of this requires the homeless person to cooperate. The system handles most of cases quite well, there aren't many beggars around, despite being a popular tourist destination. The groups who are not covered fall mainly in the categories: criminals, drug addicts, people with psychological problems, homeless by choice or lifestyle. For each of these groups I feel giving them money is a bad idea, but I hope they all find the help they need.

So no, I don't give money personally to beggars on the street. Yes, I happily pay tax and support charitable organisations.

I wonder if Elohim would accept increasing one's tithe a bit as sufficient repentance. While I dropped Mormonism after I left childhood, I still find little thought patterns in myself like wanting to give by default that I think are most simply explained by my upbringing in a smallish (~13,000 to ~26,000 over my first 10 years) city in Utah and around a close-by and religiously-involved extended family, plus cub/boy scouts.

When I see bums nowadays I think I should always give to them, but two beliefs have saved me from letting guilt get to me since about 99% or more of the time I don't give. (Especially if I'm in a bum-heavy area like Vancouver or Seattle or if I can quickly rationalize it away by the fact I don't usually carry cash or finding a place to buy a banana or whatever would be out of my planned way.) First is my relative lack of spare money since I've only recently finished college and don't have a nest egg (I do believe in paying myself first), second is my belief in optimizing charity (see the GiveWell comment). Every time I see a bum and don't give, I try to make a small mental note to donate an additional $5-$10 to my chosen non-profit at some point in the future. I've got a few hundred dollar backlog right now due to financial constraints (fortunately I don't see too many bums in my area), but this has worked out in the past. Sometimes I do give anyway, and I do feel good, and it's not just the feeling of guilt relief. Though I feel a lot better helping people who are trying to help themselves, I do judge, and I feel best helping friends and some family especially when they don't ask. In the end I'm glad when I can live with my decisions and am able to "repent" mistakes not for fear of perishing forever but because they were mistakes that I eventually recognized as such.