State-Run Lotteries: The Desperation Tax

[mick silver]

What if I told you there was a $70 billion tax that the poor pay the most. You'd probably say that isn't very fair. But that's exactly what the lottery is: an almost 12-figure tax on the desperation of the least fortunate... Researchers have found that the bottom third of households buy more than half of all tickets. So that means households making less than $28,000 a year are dishing out $450 a year on lotteries. And, as a result, everybody else doesn't have to pay the higher taxes they would if gaming revenues weren't underwriting our schools. So what? Lotteries might be just like a tax for all but the one-in-a-hundred-million who win them, but they're still a voluntary tax. It's not the government's fault that people either don't care or don't realize that, once you account for taxes and the possibility of splitting the pot, it never makes financial sense to buy a lottery ticket. Right? Well, no. It's not that poor people don't understand that the lottery has a near-zero chance of making them dynastically wealthy. It's that they think everything else has an actually-zero chance... [P]eople making less than $30,000 are 25 percent more likely to say that they buy lottery tickets for money than for fun, while it's the opposite for everyone else. State lotteries, in other words, don't just prey on poor people's dreams—they do that for everyone—but rather on desperate dreams. – Washington Post, May 14, 2015 As taxes go, state-run lotteries seem like a good idea. No one forces you to pay, they don't infringe on your privacy, and the games raise money very efficiently. The Washington Post writer points out that lotteries prey disproportionately on the poor. People who can least afford to take the risk are actually more likely to do it. This seems irrational. Why do they do it? We suspect the answer is ignorance. People who buy lottery tickets simply don't understand how much the odds are against their winning. Lottery marketers certainly don't help, either. They use the same techniques Las Vegas casinos employ to keep you playing slots. A series of small wins entice players to keep on pulling and increase their bets. The mathematical facts remain in effect, though. The longer you play the more certain you are to lose. Lottery players don't conduct a cost-benefit analysis before buying tickets. If they did, they would know they are far more likely to be hit by a truck and killed on the way home than they are to win the Powerball jackpot. Not coincidentally, whatever math most lottery players do know came from a public school education. They didn't learn much in the first place and retained very little of it. This makes them susceptible to clever, hope-laden marketing. Mirabile dictu, what governmental activity do lotteries fund in most states? Public schools, of course. The schools then create more mathematically ignorant citizens to become the next generation of lottery customers – a never-ending cycle. The real winners are the lottery authorities and the private contractors they employ. They get to ignore the consumer protection laws other merchants must follow and enjoy a near-permanent revenue stream skimmed from lottery proceeds. This "voluntary" tax may be better than forcible confiscation, but it is not harmless. Government never is... no matter how we pay for it. - See more at: http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/36315/State-Run-Lotteries-The-Desperation-Tax/#sthash.FNkzRBEE.dpuf

[madfranks]

What if I told you there was a $70 billion tax that the poor pay the most. You'd probably say that isn't very fair. But that's exactly what the lottery is: an almost 12-figure tax on the desperation of the least fortunate


Hmm, I dunno. Taxes are involuntary, while buying lottery tickets is voluntary. Nobody forces poor people to buy them, but the fact is they have the most to gain by a lottery win, which is why they buy them more than rich people. I don't think tax is the right word for this.

[Glass]

We had a $30 million lottery on Tuesday and a $50 million today. You have to hope you have a chance and for a chance you need a ticket. I participate in some of these big jackpots all the while holding out a little hope that it is not as rigged as the Connecticut lottery. I expect though, that if shown a list of 1st prize winners it would become apparent some people are luckier than others. I have noticed the odds have become consistently worse over the years and now it is very difficult to even win the entry level prizes in some of these games.

Its like all gambling. House wins.

[Ponce]

I only buy ONE ticket when is OVER one million.......what the hell, it is a cheap dream for two bucks.

My dream depends on my winnings......but....winning over 500 millions will set me up for a anti-Zionist radio station in the US.....with repeaters in LS, Washington, NY, Chicago and a few more places.......as a guest speaker I would have even the "real" Jews.

Under that amount?......and at my age?.........crap, will see when I win it.

[BrewTech]

Hmm, I dunno. Taxes are involuntary, while buying lottery tickets is voluntary. Nobody forces poor people to buy them, but the fact is they have the most to gain by a lottery win, which is why they buy them more than rich people. I don't think tax is the right word for this.

I agree with this guy. The lottery is a tax on people that can't do math.

(I do understand your point however)

[Cebu_4_2]

I agree with this guy. The lottery is a tax on people that can't do math.

(I do understand your point however)

I still play my numbers, a couple bux a week hurts nothing. Big payoff? All my GSUS friends go on world tour... Oops, I don't have any GSUS friends. So the big time win is all mine.

[Hitch]

I still play my numbers, a couple bux a week hurts nothing. Big payoff? All my GSUS friends go on world tour... Oops, I don't have any GSUS friends. So the big time win is all mine.

I play on occasion, maybe once a month at most, one ticket. The one thing I will not do...is have my own numbers. Quick picks for me.

I like the thought of doing something nice for my parents. Mom, Dad, the house is paid off, let's do something fun. They are both retired accountants and very good with their funds, they do fine, but would be nice to set them up and thank them for everything they've done for me.

[BrewTech]

“The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons.”
― George Orwell (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3706.George_Orwell), 1984 (http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/153313)



State run lottery not a new racket.

[Shami-Amourae]

Imagine if we didn't have to pay taxes, but the State generated revenue by having a monopoly on gambling.

[Dachsie]

I guess I see this article, while it does contain some interesting, probably factual, information, as fundamentally off the track as to its thesis.

The most truthful or on-point statement in the article was...

"It's not that poor people don't understand that the lottery has a near-zero chance of making them dynastically wealthy. It's that they think everything else has an actually-zero chance."

I think one has to honestly try to imagine or look at what day to day life is like for poor people in poor neighborhoods or in lottery-selling retail places that sell the tickets where poor people frequent such as 7-11 type convenience stores.

For a few seconds and a few bucks they have hope. They are not even hoping to win the big prize; they are thinking small like just winning $100 or $50. That small win for a few bucks and a few minutes of hope is a very big win for them compared to the hopelessness and dead end they see all around them. It is a ticket to a small door out of that world of hopelessness.

I do not play the lottery but my brother and my sister sometimes five me a stack of tickets for my birthday or Christmas. It is kind of fun scratching off the ticket and having all those chances to win on one big ticket. It takes a few minutes and I have hope all the way up to the last scratch-off. Fun Fun Fun

I won $50 on one of these tickets about two years ago and I asked someone else at the party near me if I had understood correctly how it works and if it did indeed show I had won $50 and they verified it for me. I have vision problems and was unfamiliar with these things so it was good to make sure. I went to and EXXon convenience store near a filling station in my neighborhood. The clerk asked me if I wanted to buy some more lottery tickets with my winnings instead of him giving me the $50 and I said no. That is the slimy modus operandi of these convenience store clerks. Hook the addicted to hopeless hope person in to sacrificing their little big of sunshine for more hopeless hope.

I think we need to think about God's economy and this world's economy. If you pray and live each day as best you can in obedience and supplication to God, He will help you to live in that hopeless environment free of addictions and free of sin. I heard the story of some Black young man about 15 years old living in a run down tenement building in the slums of some big city. He had developed the hobby of raising homing pidgeons and used the roof of his tenement building. He found it to be a fun interesting hobby and he said he could see "the streets" offered him nothing so he did not spend his time down there with the guys in the neighborhood. He just developed his hobby to a high degree to the point that he got interviewed on a TV news show that made it to TBN or CBN.

I think God will show a person what their talent is. The person can use that talent for the glory of God and it will be their real ticket to hope. They will be able to spend their free time doing something meaningful that they really enjoy and gives them peace and a sense of creativity or resourcefulness in doing that activity better and better each day, all the while escaping from the moral minefield all around them always going about like a roaring line seeking who it may hook and suck in to destructive hopeless behaviors that are death to their souls and bodies.

[Twisted Titan]

Its funny my wife by scratch off every once in a while and i tell her that scratch offs are WORSE then lottery tickets for the simple fact no one knows if they loss untill the numbers are actually drawn.

With scratch off everybody knows the ticket is a dud EXCEPT YOU.

I dont bust her chops over it.


Anyway she had two winners for 5 bucks and she asked me to cash them in.

I went to the store and plunked them down and went strolling around .

When i came back to the counter he had my 5 there and i picked it up said thanks and proceeded to walk out.

His eyes said it all

Like your not goingto get more tickets? Dont you wanna try it one more time?

They really hate to see any money walk out the door

Even five beans

[Twisted Titan]

There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty




The same tribe still runs the local loteries

[Dachsie]

The way it works in my state is that the state agency that runs the lottery has buriaucrats who are the buddies of the agency-head hired and running the state part of the operation and those guys' buddies are given extremely lucrative government contracts to print and make the tickets and all other stuff needed to run the lottery racket. The guys who get those contracts make great personal big bucks and of course, they pay a kickback to the guys in the state agency who made that largesse happen for them, and all this kickback money goes also back to the agency head guy who often is a statewide elected office for their campaign fund. For all sides in this equation, it's the gift that keeps on giving, all except for the poor hopeless hope-addicted guy going in to the convenience store every day. Education may be the cover for how the money works for the good of all, but help to schools really is a relative small thing. The money seems to get siphoned off to all the state employed people with big salaries and the good ole boys who receive the no bid contracts.

[Uncle Salty]

It gives the plebs hope and a reason to wake up every day.

Take that away and the riots begin.

[BrewTech]

There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty




The same tribe still runs the local loteries
If George Orwell used a given word when writing, you can bet it was for a reason...the use of "tribe" was not random.. Comrade Blair knew the score...

[gunDriller]

it's high risk investing that looks high-return, but technically it's low return.