This is true as is the nature of "food deserts" in the poorer neighbors, at least where I live – there are higher concentrations of convenience stores, drive-thrus, and gas stations that feature items like tobacco products, alcohol, and lottery tickets that similarly exploit the local populations impulse purchases and eat up what little income they earn from two or more low-paying jobs. It's viciously cyclical and th…
> This is the dark side of liberty where we see that people do not always choose the best options
Most evil in the world is done by people who know what is best for everyone else, and forces it on them.
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."
> Wealthy people got wealthy by putting their money into index funds and savings accounts. No they didn't. Not with the implied "as an alternative to lottery tickets". You could probably find a handful of very well paid and very lottery addicted people constantly blowing up that income. For 99.99[more 9s]% of people, the cost of lottery tickets is not the difference between getting wealthy and not getting wealthy. Ev…
The vast majority of wealthy people got wealthy by winning the birth lottery.
Okay, just replace our existing failed welfare system with this then. You don't think there's massive suppressed innovation because so few people can try a startup?
We don't have a "failed welfare system". Welfare works. The only "failure" here is our failure to keep adequately funding it.
It's failed in the sense that poverty rates stopped declining in 1968, when welfare started.
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…
It is not a tax in the strict, technical sense, obviously. But in practise it functions much as one. The comment you're responding to tells you why it shouldn't be banned: because then it will be held by criminals (by definition) instead. And those criminals tend to have ties to less nice forms of crime too. So it's sort of a damage containment strategy, but it could (in the eyes of GP) be executed better.
Is it really true though. Lotto ticks are sold in every small corner store, many gas station convenience stores, and most chain convenience stores, and many grocery stores. If they were illegal, most of those places would stop selling. What percentage of people that currently buy lotto tickets would seek out illegal places to get them? If it's 100% then sure, keep the legal lotto. If it's 5% though, what then?
>"Offer a lottery with a high payout rate and flatten jackpots to the extent they don't cause a shift into other worse sorts of gambling" What is meant here by "flattening" jackpots? And how does it help?
> What is meant here by "flattening" jackpots? And how does it help? Instead of 1 in 300,000,000 chance of astronomical money make it 1 in 50,000 of getting a new car or similar. I'm not sure why it helps. I guess there are more (but smaller) winners, which the poster thought was better.
I assume that would reduce lottery proceeds significantly so is a nonstarter. I know the numbers, but I'm not so sure it's always illogical (in a human/emotional sense) and you get quite a bit if middle class people playing when the payouts are significant. YOLO
But why not just direct UBI? What is the point of tax subsidised lotteries, to enrich a minuscule % of poor people while all the others buy tickets in hope?
As one fair way of allocating insufficient resources. The lottery is evidence a lot of poor people would rather have a chance at radically improving their life than a small amount of money.
Do you have any real evidence that poor people would prefer a 1/300M chance in winning the lottery versus a guaranteed paycheck for their monthly expenses? I would love to see the proof for your assertion.
As one fair way of allocating insufficient resources. The lottery is evidence a lot of poor people would rather have a chance at radically improving their life than a small amount of money.
Do you have any real evidence that poor people would prefer a 1/300M chance in winning the lottery versus a guaranteed paycheck for their monthly expenses? I would love to see the proof for your assertion.
No, that sounds highly implausible to me. A guaranteed paycheck of $1,000/month to every American (in current USD) would be way better than what I suggested. This idea presumes scarcer resources.
I'm talking about something more like the difference between a 1/10 chance of $1,000/month for a year with a new drawing in a year vs $100/month for a year every year.
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…
By same argument government should sell drugs, payday loans, gambling rings
If playing the lottery becomes worthwhile, arbitrageurs will immediately step in until it isn't. Got a lottery ticket with a 10% chance of being worth $100? I'll give you and each of your friends $8.50 for them, guaranteed, today. Lotteries penalize people who are bad at math. It really is that simple.
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…
Gambling is a vice and pretending that it's not doesn't help people. You do receive utility from buying a single lottery ticket, because it allows you to dream, but that's not something that scales with increased spending. Beyond that, it is never a rational decision to buy lottery tickets. You're almost always going to be happier if you put that money aside in an emergency fund. In the past, you'd be able to use the excuse of poor people being underbanked, but these days there are plenty of fee-free online banks.