No book on survival should fail to give you some good tips on how to rip-off bread. Really horning in on this chapter will put you on Free-loader Street life, ’cause with all the money in Amerika, the only thing you’ll have trouble getting is poor.
WELFARE
It’s easy to get on welfare that anyone who is broke and doesn’t have a regular relief check coming in is nothing but a goddamn lazy bum! Each state has a different set up. The racist penny-pinchers of Mississippi dole out only $8.00 a month. New York dishes ont the most with monthly payments up to $120.00. The Amerikan Public Welfare Association publishes a book called The Public Welfare Directory with information on exactly what each welfare agency provides and how you go about qualifying. You can read the directory at any public library to find out all you can about how your local office operates.
When you’ve discovered everything you need to know, head on down to the Welfare Department in your grubbiest clothes. Not sleeping the night before helps. The receptionist will assign an “intaker” to interview you. After a long wait, you’ll be directed to a desk. The intaker raps to you for a while, generally showing sympathy for your plight and turns you over to the caseworker who will make the final and ultimate assessment.
Have your heaviest story ready to ooze out. If you have no physical disabilities, lay down a “mentally deranged” rap. Getting medical papers saying you have any long-term illness or defect helps a lot. Tell the caseworker you get dizzy spells on the job and faint in the street. Keep bobbing your head, yawning, or scratching. Tell him that you have tried to commit suicide recently because you just can’t make it in a world that has forgotten how to love. Don’t lay it on too obviously. Wait till he “pries” some of the details from you. This makes the story even more convincing. Many welfare workers are young and hip. The image you are working on is that of a warm, sensitive kid victimized by brutal parents and a cold ruthless society. Tell them you held off coming for months because you wanted to maintain some self-respect even though have been walking the streets broke and hungry. If you are a woman tell him you were recently raped. In sexist Amerika, this will probably be true.
After about an hour or so of this soap-opera stuff, you’ll be ready to get your first check. From then on it’s a monthly check, complete medical care for free and all sorts of other outasight benefits. Occasionally the caseworker will drop by your pad or ask you down to the office to see how you’re coming along, but with your condition, things don’t look so good. Don’t abandon hope though. Hope always helps fill in a caseworker’s report.
The real trick is to parlay welfare payments in a few different states. Work out an exchange system with a buddy and mail each other the checks when they come in. If the caseworker comes by, your roommate can say you went to find a job or enrolled in a class. We know cats who have parlayed welfare payments up to six hundred dollars a month.
UNEMPLOYMENT
Every outlaw should learn everything there is to know about the rules governing unemployment insurance. As in the case of welfare rules, eligibility, and the size of payments differ from state to state. In New York, you are eligible for payments equivalent to half your weekly salary before taxes up to $65 per week, on the condition that you have worked for a minimum of twenty weeks during the year. Payments are somewhat lower in most other states. In order to collect, you must show you are actively searching for a job and keep a record of employers you contact. This can easily be fudged. Every time you’re questioned about it, mention one or two companies. If your hair is long, you’ll have no problem. Just say they won’t hire you until you get a haircut. When this is the case, the unemployment office cannot cut off your payments or your hair. They also cannot make you accept a job you do not want. Tell them any job offer you get is not challenging enough for your talents. Unemployment can be collected for six months before payments are terminated. Twenty more weeks of slavery and you can go back to maintaining your dignity in the unemployment line. These job insurance payments cannot be taxed and since you are working so few weeks out of each year, your taxable income is at a minimum. Read all the fine print for tax form 1040 and discover all the deductible loopholes available to you. You should wind up paying no taxes at all or having all the taxes that were deducted from your pay reimbursed. Never turn over to the pig government any funds you can rip off. Remember, it isn’t your government, so why submit to its taxation if you feel you do not have representation.
PANHANDLING
The practice of going up to folks and bumming money is a basic hustling art. If you are successful at panhandling, you’ll be able to master all the skills in the book and then some. To be good at it requires a complete knowledge of what motivates people. Even if we don’t need the bread, we panhandle on the streets in the same way doctors go back to medical school. It helps us stay in shape. Panhandling is illegal throughout Pig Empire, but it’s one of those laws that is rarely enforced unless they want to “clean the area” of hippies. If you’re in a strange locale, ask a fellow panhandler what the best places to work are without risking a bust. Do it in front of supermarkets, theaters, sporting events, hip dress shops and restaurants. College cafeterias are very good hunting grounds.
When you’re hustling, be assertive. Don’t lean against the wall with your palm out mumbling “Spare some change?” Go up to people and stand directly in front of them so they have to look you in the eye and say no. Bum from guys with dates. Bum from motherly looking types. After a while you’ll get a sense of the type of people you get results with.
Theater can be real handy. The best actors get the most bread. Devising a street theater skit can help. A good prop is a charity canister. You can get them by going to the offices of a mainstream charity and signing up as a collector. Don’t feel bad about ripping them off. Charities are the biggest swindle around. 80% or more of the funds raised by honky charities go to the organization itself. New fancy cars for the Red Cross, inflated salaries for the executives of the Cancer Fund, tax write-offs for Jerry Lewis. You get the picture. A good way to work this and keep your karma in shape is to turn over half to a revolutionary groups such as your local underground. Remember, fugitives from injustice depend on you to survive. Be a responsible member of our nation. Support the only war we have going!
RIP-OFFS
If you are closing out your checking account, overdraw your account by $10.00. The bank won’t bother chasing you down for a lousy 10 bucks.
Call the telephone operator from time to time and tell her you lost some change in a pay phone. They will mail you the cash.
You can get $150 to $600 in advance by willing your body to a University medical school. They have you sign a lot of papers and put a tattoo on your foot. You can get the tattoo removed and sell your body to the folks across the street. The universities can be ripped off by enrolling, applying for a loan and bugging out after the loan comes through. This is a lot easier than you might imagine and you can hit them for up to $2,500 with a good enough story.
Put a number 14 brass washer in a newspaper vending machine and take out all the papers. Stand around the corner or go into the local bar and sell them. You often get tipped. Don’t do this with underground papers. Remember they’re your brothers and sisters.
The airlines will give you $250 for each piece of luggage you lose when flying. The following is a good way to lose your luggage. When you get off a plane, have a friend meet you at the gate. Give him your luggage claim stubs and arrange to meet at a washroom or restaurant. Your friend picks up the bags and takes them out of the baggage room. Before he leaves the airport, he turns over the stubs to you at your prearranged rendezvous. You casually wander over to the baggage department and search for your elusive luggage. When all the baggage has been claimed, file a complaint with the lost and found department. They’ll have you fill out a form, explain that it probably got misplaced on another carrier and promise to send it to you as soon as it is located. In a month you’ll receive a check for $250 per bag. Enjoy your flight.
THE INTERNATIONAL YIPPIE CURRENCY EXCHANGE
Every time you drop a coin into a slot, you are losing money needlessly. There is at least one foreign coin that is the same size or close enough that will do the trick for less than a penny. The following are some of the foreign currencies that will get you that Coke, call or subway ride.
Quarter Size Coins
* URUGUAYAN 10 CENTISIMO PIECE
o works in many soda and candy machines, older telephones (3 slot types), toll machines, laundromats, parking meters, stamp machines, and restroom novelty machines. Works also in some electric cancerette machines but not most mechanical machines.
* DANISH 5 ORE PIECE
o works in 3 slot telephones, toll machines, laundromats, automats, some stamp machines, most novelty machines, and the Boston Subway. Does not work in soda or cancerette machines.
* PERUVIAN 20 CENTAVO PIECES
o works in new (one slot) telephone and some electric cancerette machines, but does not work as many places in the Uruguay, Danish and Peruvian coins.
* ICELANDIC 5 AURAN PIECE
o most effective quarter in the world, even works in change machines. Unfortunately, this coin is practically impossible to get outside of Iceland and even there, it is becoming difficult since the government is attempting to remove it from circulation.
Dime Size Coins
* MALAYSIAN PENNY
o generally works in all dime slots, including old and new telephones, candy machines, soda machines, electric machines, stamp machines, parking meters, photocopy machines, and pay toilets. Does not work in some newer stamp dispensers, and some mechanical cancerette machines.
* TRINIDAD PENNY
o generally works the same as Malaysian Penny.
New York Subway Tokens
* DANISH 25 ORE PIECE
o works in 95% of all subway turnstiles. A very safe coin to use since it will not jam the turnstile. It is 5/l000th of an inch bigger than a token.
* PORTUGUESE 50 CENTAVO PIECE
o the average Portuguese Centavo Piece is 2/1000th of an inch smaller than a token.
* JAMAICAN HALF PENNY, BAHAMA PENNY and AUSTRALIAN SCHILLING
o these coins are 12/l000th to 15/1000th of an inch smaller than token. They work in about 80% of all turnstiles. We have also had good success with FRENCH l FRANC PIECE (WWII issue), SPANISH l0 CENTAVO PIECE NICARAGUAN 25 CENTAVO PIECE.
All of the coins listed have a currency value of a few cents, with most less than one penny. Foreign coins work more regularly than slugs and are non-magnetic, hence cannot be detected by “slug detector machines.” Also unlike slugs, although they are illegal to use in machines, they are perfectly legal to possess and exchange.
Large coin dealers and currency exchanges are generally uptight about handling cheap foreign coins in quantity since they don’t make much profit and are subject to certain pressures in selling coins that are the same size as Amerikan coins or tokens.
People planning trips to European or South American countries should bring back rolls of coins as souvenirs or for use in “coin jewelry.”
If you do not plan to travel, a small coin store which is cool about selling to the public is located on the Lower East Side at 191 East Third Street, New York City. When their phone works, the number is 475-9897.
Washers are the most popular types of slugs. You can go to any hardware store and match them up with various coins. Sometimes you might have to put a small piece of scotch tape over one side of the hole to make it more effective. Each washer is identified by its material and number, i.e. No. 14 brass washer with scotch tape on one side is a perfect dime. When you get the ones you want, you can buy thousands for next to nothing (especially at industrial supply stores) and pass them out to our friends.
Xerox copies of both sides of a dollar bill, carefully glued together, work in most machines that give you change for a dollar. Excuse us, there is a knock at the door. . .Fancy that! It’s the Treasury Department. Wonder what they want?