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SoullessAutomaton comments on AndrewH's observation and opportunity costs - Less Wrong
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You seem to be assuming that begging is unskilled "work" and thus all beggars make roughly the same "wage" on average. I highly doubt this is the case; a beggar who can more effectively evoke sympathy in passers-by will make a better haul.
For instance, in an urban environment, a beggar probably wants to maximize their exposure to naive folks from out of town; urban residents will probably have learned to ignore the begging more effectively. With a population sufficiently generous and gullible, it's entirely possible that, for people with few career prospects, it will only be the ones too incompetent to beg who will end up in no-skill minimum wage work.
On the higher end, this also blends into buskers and low-level "my wallet was stolen, I need money for a train ticket to get home to my kids" type scamming as more sophisticated (and profitable) forms.
See also this article.
I'm glad you included a link on this one. Until I got to that, it seemed like pure armchair theorizing.
It was armchair theorizing, informed by knowledge I have acquired, including memories of articles such as the one linked to. I actually wrote the whole comment before looking up that article based on vague recollection of it.
That said, the assumption that an activity that one does to acquire money should, in absence of bureaucratic meddling, pay similar amounts independent of skill at the activity, seems to me far more implausible by default than the opposite.