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State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

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Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#121

Post by yawnr »

landemva wrote: post #105
wronglebowski wrote: post #8

Being raised in what I believe to be one of these communities this feels very true. In Pennsylvania this supposedly supports seniors, but seniors often are the ones gambling. The most frequent shops for selling lottery tickets are also tobacco stores. I find it hard to resist a scratch off from time to time myself. I don’t know what the solution is, I know it gives people hope and excitement. Even if they think it’s…

> what the solution is No loss lottery run by local bank or credit union would be a good start. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-america-ready-for-a-no-l... https://pooltogether.com

Yotta does this in an FDIC insured account btw

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#122

Post by [deleted] »

ISL wrote: post #33
grubbs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commercials I see here for the DC/VA lottery are quite disgusting. I'm "kind of" fine with the state running it. But they should not be advertising on TV.

Washington State Lottery has a slogan, "It's good to play!" It really should be, "Playing the lottery is a pretty terrible idea and we're going to, on average, take your money. If you still want to play, fine, but cheeseburgers really are better than lottery tickets. Wealthy people got wealthy by putting their money into index funds and savings accounts."

[deleted]

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#123

Post by ISL »

atwood22 wrote: post #99
ISL wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally when lotteries "fund education", it can enable legislatures to allocate tax money that had previously gone to education to other priorities. This shift can turn lotteries into a de facto tax on being bad at math.

> This shift can turn lotteries into a de facto tax on being bad at math. Would lotteries be ok if the expected value of the players prize equaled the price of the ticket? Being bad at math and lotteries being a regressive tax seem orthogonal.

On average, yeah, I think so. It would then be a way to say that money has non-linear utility, which is probably true. An aggregated million dollars probably does have more utility than a million single dollars.

Such an institution would be difficult to administer with zero operating costs, though.

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#124

Post by s1artibartfast »

mullingitover wrote: post #72
s17n wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to transfer anything, though - just get rid of the marketing, take a couple percent to cover administrative expenses, and spend the rest on payouts. If you need money for education, tax people in a fairer way.

> If you need money for education, tax people in a fairer way. I don't think anyone is compelled to gamble by the Georgia Department of Revenue. This is essentially Georgia saying, "We know we can't stop you from engaging in this vice, so we're at least going to make it beneficial to society in some way." Colorado and a number of other states are doing the same thing with cannabis revenue. I personally hate gambling,…

There is no reason to advertise and promote it. I wouldn't want the government giving out free samples of heroin because you can't stop people from vice.

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#125

Post by pmontra »

chernevik wrote: post #43
david2ndaccount wrote: post #11

The argument for the state having a monopoly on lotteries is that if there wasn’t a legal lottery illegal lotteries would proliferate. Thus to protect people, the state should run it as it would then be guaranteed to be fair and free of the criminal element (mobsters, etc.). Ideally, the lotto would just take in enough to pay the winners and administrative expenses. However, most states have abused this monopoly and…

Came here to say exactly this. People will play numbers games organized by the mob, so it does make sense to give them an honest game and keep the money from crooks. But the state take should be small. And absolutely no advertising.

I accept that a state monopoly is better than making the mob richer and stronger. However given that it's mostly the poor that play lotteries, bingo, etc and all of them are rigged against the players, the state should find a way to give back most of those money to the players (there are expenses to keep it running.) If a private company is running it for the state, the margin should be small. This is maybe even something a politician could use in a campaign.

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#126

Post by ac29 »

iudqnolq wrote: post #65
yunohn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the lottery like UBI? This is similar to crypto maxis gambling on shitcoins and saying “generational wealth opportunity”. Both of these are the siphoning of money from large volumes of people to a few people, who are the “success stories” used to dupe the next set of people.

I'm saying it's about the specific values of the parameters. Right now they're set so it's an evil trap. But we could maybe just tweak the parameters so that wasn't the case. If the evil of the lottery is that the expected value is lower than the ticket cost that's just a simple stats problem to fix.

Are you suggesting the lottery should be changed so the expected value is higher than the ticket cost? How would that work?

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#127

Post by diordiderot »

landemva wrote: post #112
Tozen wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be also missing the point of these lottery retailers being disproportionately clustered in the poor Black neighborhoods. The "math problem" also involves pushing the distribution of the "vice" off on them (where such people are more desperate to escape their circumstances), then negating any overall or possible benefit to those poor Blacks that don't have such a vice (like kids) and need greater education…

> those poor Blacks This is patronizing and wrong. Math skills are also lacking in many white communities. Maybe it is more about cultural acceptance than math skills.

This sounds like a dog whistle.

Denying effects of systemic racism and blaming 'culture'

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#128

Post by iudqnolq »

ac29 wrote: post #126
iudqnolq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it's about the specific values of the parameters. Right now they're set so it's an evil trap. But we could maybe just tweak the parameters so that wasn't the case. If the evil of the lottery is that the expected value is lower than the ticket cost that's just a simple stats problem to fix.

Are you suggesting the lottery should be changed so the expected value is higher than the ticket cost? How would that work?

The same way below market rate public housing works: subsidy from tax revenue

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#129

Post by pmontra »

riffraff wrote: post #91
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mob, let alone legal casino operators, would never get away with such ridiculous margins. Even organized crime faces competition from unorganized crime, your neighbor's home poker game will probably have a pretty low rake.

When I was a kid sport betting was illegal in Italy, and almost everyone I knew played illegal sport bets. But we also had legal national Lotto[0], and _illegal_ Lotto betting with about the same margins. And when sport betting got legalized, the odds given where about the same as the illegal one, until the latter de facto disappeared. So, I'm not sure the mob would not get away with Lottery margins. [0] the traditio…

We had Totocalcio too. Btw, I didn't know anybody betting on sport results but I remember the TV talking about that. Interesting bits at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Totonero

Re: State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

#130

Post by missedthecue »

david2ndaccount wrote: post #11

The argument for the state having a monopoly on lotteries is that if there wasn’t a legal lottery illegal lotteries would proliferate. Thus to protect people, the state should run it as it would then be guaranteed to be fair and free of the criminal element (mobsters, etc.). Ideally, the lotto would just take in enough to pay the winners and administrative expenses. However, most states have abused this monopoly and…

Is it really a tax if it's voluntary? That seems like a contradiction of terms.

And why not ban the lottery entirely if you're not going to use it as a revenue source? Keep it around just to entertain poor people? 99.999% of them will still lose money anyway if it's morality you're worried about. Does it really matter to the winners whether they take home $100mm or $70mm (and the gov the remaining $30mm)?

It doesn't matter for the losers, they're out their money either way.

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