Man takes to streets with sign telling beggars to 'get a job'

A retired military veteran with, apparently, enough free time to stand on street corners and taunt panhandlers, is using that time to urge people to find a job instead of begging for cash.

When he sees panhandlers on corners, Nebraska man Charles Logan says he often parks his car and gets out with his sign that says, “Get a job. Get a job.”

“If you want money, go get a job and work for it,” Mr Logan told ABC.

Mr Logan said that he was inspired to do so after seeing his own son panhandling for money.

“That's really what hurt me. Because I know that he didn't have to do that. And a lot of people out here don't have to do it,” Mr Logan said.

Some of the panhandlers he has targeted, though, note that painting strangers with broad strokes often misses the point. Life isn’t so simple, and a variety of factors can keep someone from getting a job.

“He has a sign that says, ‘get a job’, but he doesn’t know people’s struggles,” panhandler Charles Smith said.

Mr Smith is a single father, and struggling to pay rent while facing eviction. He’s waiting on a disability check, too.

“We all go through our personal struggles. Whether it be financial, physical, mental, emotional, and he doesn’t understand that,” Mr Smith said.

While the official unemployment rate in the United States dropped to 4.3 per cent in May — down from 10 per cent in 2010 after the recession — and the stock market has reached record highs, many Americans are still struggling to make ends meet. Underemployment rates, which adds the number of people who are looking for work to the number of part time workers looking for full time work, remain high, at 14 per cent as of April.