Panhanding of the Future

This is a fairly silly idea I'm about to have in front of you. But could be really interesting. Some charitable organization should test this for me. Here it goes:

Portable credit card machines for the homeless. First lets talk hardware. These things exist already. You slide your card, the machine wirelessly calls up the credit card company, charges your account and you walk away with your goods Scott-free. Except that this time, you're walking away with the sense of satisfaction you get from helping the needy.

If some organization furnished the homeless with these maybe more people would give. And maybe they wouldn't. But there are distinct advantages. First, it could regulate the use of the money given better. Like the organization could enforce the doling out of cash better, keep people from going straight to the liquor store or worse with it. Obviously this opens the idea up to a lot of potentially corruption. But we'll cross our fingers and hope.

Second, and here again is a way this could increase people's willingness to give, the machines track the amount you give and to whom, so it could be recorded as a charitable donation and we untaxed.

So what we have is a system that both incentivizes the giving for the giver and offers some gives them some guarantee that the money they are giving will be put to good use.

Genius. Ridiculous and genius.