Kids, the places a prestigious UW economics degree can take you are limited only by your imagination. While new lows in advertising are hardly news and homeless exploitation depends on exactly this kind of coverage, we're reporting anyway on "Bumvertising" in which area panhandlers are paid to add marketing messages to their signage.
From the UW Daily (ahem, verbatim):
Stationed at freeway on- and off-ramps located on Northeast 45th and 50th Streets, panhandlers have chosen to put their roadside signs to more than use. "bumvertising," as its creator Benjamin Rogovy calls the project, offers food, water and money in exchange for displaying a sign that advertises Rogovy's Web site.
People coming out of school with no recognizable talent or vocation who think that taking their friends' beer money off the poker table qualifies them to write a book are apparently a dime a dozen, and plenty of assholes turn to mass emails and blog comment and trackback spam to hawk their crap poker books, but only the cream of the crop realize the actual money is in developing yet sleazier methods of advertising to sell to other assholes with a poker book of their own.
We suggest Rogovoy return to the UW as faculty this coming semester and teach a class along these lines:
1) Pay homeless people miniscule amounts of money to degrade themselves and make up a snappy name for the activity that includes the word "bum."
2) ???
3) Profit
He probably gets a job out of this from someone who posts on his website forum about how hilarious they think it is.
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I think any way of hiring a homeless person should be a good thing. I am sure they do not get paid that well for having a sign at the bottom, it's not like they get paid by the hour (they only get $1-$5 a day plus sandwich and bottle of water for advertising all day long in extreme weather conditions, making a lousy 5 cents an hour to 25 cents per hour, wow, BIG MONEY)...
Now the panhandler is less likely to get spare change from passer-bys as it looks as though they have a "job" advertising (they may actually make less money than before), this was the case with "panners" that sold the "Spare Changes" or "Street News" type newspapers (they could get much more money begging without selling papers).
What I think bumvertisments should do is make it so that if the agency used all 4 sides of a panhandlers sign (maybe even the backside), they panhandler should have an oppritunity to least make close to minimum wage (aprox $6/hr), that's about a $1.00 per ad per hour (monitor their progress by having them panhandle near live webcam in city). This would be enuough income generated so that the homeless person could actually get a cheap hotel for the night so they can sleep well and clean up for the next day of work. Giving a panhandler $1-5 dollars for a long days work is not helping, that will not even cover breakfast the following morning! Maybe give/rent these homeless people warm jackets (or t-shirts for hot climate) to wear that will allow more advertising on the back and front too (will help homeless stay warm). This advertising agency should be trying to make the homeless people NON-HOMLESS, by offering an actual wage for the "full package ad pack", these homeless people could get off the streets and become employees (on contract) rather than helpless & homeless (this would lessen the controversy of the agency too, they could probably even get grants and hold fund raisers to help the cause)...
http://www.SpareSomeChange.com is the homeless search engine (poverty link portal) I made.