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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

#171

Post by bobkazamakis »

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.

misquoting someone is an interesting way to dog whistle

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

#172

Post by bitshiftfaced »

bobkazamakis wrote: post #170
bitshiftfaced wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that similarly exploit the local populations impulse purchases and eat up what little income they earn from two or more low-paying jobs. I don't understand this. What's special about this population? Should you not be able to make impulse purchases based off of your income level?

is your argument that impulse purchases at dollar general that hemmorage money out of the local economy are good because they are poor?

I'm trying to understand why we would have a view other than neutral when it comes to whether people have the ability to spend their own money on impulse items or otherwise.

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

#173

Post by jlarocco »

mullingitover wrote: post #113
dymk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're heavily subsidized by coastal blue states and they're still 50th percentile.

Georgia isn't heavily subsidized (unlike most states in the region), they actually rank 36th in federal dependency[1]. Maine, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island all rank higher on federal dependency. [1] https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...

I agree with your point, but the numbers on that site are suspicious.

New Mexico's GDP isn't $400 billion - it's more like $100 billion. Colorado's is about $380-400 billion, and not $1.5 trillion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico

https://www.deptofnumbers.com/gdp/new-mexico/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Colorado

https://www.deptofnumbers.com/gdp/colorado/

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

#174

Post by claar »

phkahler wrote: post #140
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…

In Michigan they sold it by saying all the lottery money would go to education. But other funding to education was cut by the same amount, so technically the lottery is funding education even though the revenue increase went somewhere else.

This is my biggest pet peeve with local tax increases. They always claim the money is going to whatever the public most cares about - education, etc. - but really it's just an overall budget increase, and the amount spent on education doesn't actually increase.

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

#175

Post by bogomipz »

Rury wrote: post #108
bogomipz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty amazing how the states are in the business of: booze, tobacco, weed, gambling and gas Imagine what the total revenue from just those 5 things is? It's got to be like printing cash and yet in most states and cities across the US have crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, underfunded pensions and budget deficits. This is in addition to all their other more regular tax regimes. Where does the money go?

It's not as much as you'd think. For Illinois, lottery alone nets something like $3 billion, of which ~$700-750 million goes to funding public schools. Public schools expenditures are ~$35 Billion/year. So, less than 1/35th of costs. Add in the alcohol, tobacco, weed, gambling taxes, and you still not even close to covering half the state's school expenditures. Granted, Illinois is perhaps the most fiscally screwed s…

>"Public schools expenditures are ~$35 Billion/year."

That all appears way off.

"This year, the governor plans to increase the state’s education general fund by $498.1 million — a 5.4% increase — for an overall budget of $9.7 billion."[1]

Additionally the Illinois state gas tax which is the second highest in the US is 40 cents a gallon.[2][3]

[1] https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2022/2/2/22914634/pritzker-pro...

[2] https://www.axios.com/local/chicago/2022/03/22/illinois-gas-...

[3] https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-2nd-highest-gas-taxe...

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

#176

Post by bigjimmyk3 »

WalterBright wrote: post #154
afc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and I know someone who got rich by buying the lottery. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really prove anything, does it?

80% of American millionaires are self made. https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer... Consider also that the US was populated by people who arrived with nothing. It wasn't wealthy people that came here from Europe.

While this book is getting a little long in the tooth (the title needs to be inflation-adjusted now, I suppose), it's still a fascinating read. The authors considered "self-made" to mean that the subject did not receive monetary support from their ancestors as an adult in the form of trusts, inheritance, or other forms of "economic outpatient care" (their term).

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

#177

Post by sam-s »

1. Lotteries are not taxes because the participation is voluntary (unlike the soviet lottery/got's bond combo).

2. People buy lottery tickets just like they buy movie tickets - it is a form of _entertainment_. They heard many times that they should not expect to win - just like they heard many times that what they see on the silver screen is not real. Nevertheless they keep dreaming.

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

#178

Post by imtringued »

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…

Ugh, you could literally pay a UBI from that and CO2 dividends, yes it will be small but it would be fair.

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

#179

Post by dillondoyle »

soulofmischief wrote: post #159
dillondoyle wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't be the only one here who buys them. I make good money. They're only $2. The 5 minutes I spend walking to the office after buying one spent thinking about what I would do with ___ is worth it. Yes, I know the math and am under no delusion about winning. I'm more likely to die trying to avoid the shitty drivers on this walk. It's day dream entertainment!

Then maybe you don't follow under the demographic of "needy" My mother also spends $2 on them. Sometimes a couple times a day. She also compulsively gambles and has endangered my life before trying to satiate the urge. I also grew up absolutely dirt poor, she was homeless half the time, but two unwavering constants in her life have been cigarettes and gambling, and they are far from unrelated when speaking of industr…

Sorry that sucks. I'm intimately aware of addiction and how it can sadly smash families and people from all backgrounds and economic situations, so I'm empathetic to that problem.

And I'm for sure not disadvantaged myself.

I didn't know where to comment a reply this seemed most relevant.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is a lot of the threads here, to me, read as elitist & missing the full picture.

E.g. for instance missing the value of entertainment.

even on an unkind view of looking at players only as addicts, like lots of drugs (legal and not), that dopamine hit is fun...

to be clear I'm not trying to put that negative frame into all the people's intention here, just trying to explain how I read a chunk of the comments

It's not only some uneducated non-optimal financial ROI calculation made by disadvantaged people, or compulsive gamblers, who are being taken advantage of by state sponsored casinos imho

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

#180

Post by ISL »

fsckboy wrote: post #155
ISL wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> An aggregated million dollars probably does have more utility than a million single dollars. no, it's the exact opposite, there is a declining marginal utility to money. Think of it this way, homeless person gets a dollar, that's some food for the day. A second dollar is better, but it's not as valuable as that first dollar, but the second dollar is worth more than a third dollar; all the way up to Bill Gates, how…

I wasn't referring to the marginal utility for a person, but rather the economies of scale that come with focused capital-allocation.

A million people with single dollars probably can't coordinate to build a consumer product.

A Kickstarter with a million dollars may be able to generate a consumer product that improves the lives of a million people.

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