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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

#181

Post by mrguyorama »

WalterBright wrote: post #141
basilgohar wrote: post #13

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.

What strong evidence do you have for this thought terminating cliche?

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

#182

Post by mrguyorama »

landemva wrote: post #109
cercatrova wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes, but not always, top down approaches are more efficient and lead to better outcomes than bottom up approaches.

Top down means government control - socialism, at best.

Meanwhile nobody pitches a fit that literally every single business is a centrally managed and top down entity, and it seems to do quite well for a lot of them.

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

#183

Post by mrguyorama »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #162
HWR_14 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it hard to resist a scratch off from time to time myself. As long as you aren't doing it to win but instead to enjoy yourself gambling, and you do it with disposable income, this is fine. Don't beat yourself up for enjoying something mathematically suboptimal. > Even if they think it’s impossible to work themselves out of debt they hope they’ll “win big” one day keeps them going to an extent. It’s really jus…

No. It's more like "Do you want one single marshmallow, which might bring you a few brief seconds of pleasure - in the unlikely chance that the dog doesn't eat it first or it doesn't get covered in ants first? Or would you rather have a one in a million chance of having as many marshmallows as you want, whenever you want, for the rest of your life, with no more worries about the dogs or ants because there'd be plenty…

Except the odds are never NEARLY as good as one in a million, and humans have a well documented inability to fairly judge odds and understand large numbers.

Would the lottery be nearly as exciting for people if they had a genuine understanding for the statistics involved? I don't mean that they've seen the math, but that you can feel in your gut just how impossible it is to "win" the lottery

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

#184

Post by mrguyorama »

josephg wrote: post #53
femto wrote: post #40

It's true of gambling in general. A case study is the state of New South Wales in Australia: the state with the most poker (slot) machines per capita [1], in the country with he most poker machines per capita [2] (excluding gambling specific destinations such as Macau and Monaco). One poker machine in NSW for every 82 people, with an average loss of AU$1000 per adult per year. The losses (called profit for the hotels…

The "You Can't Ask That" episode on gambling in Australia was a massive eye-opener for me. They interview a bunch of people who are lifetime gambling addicts. Its shocking how badly its ruined their lives. I have no idea how many people who gamble regularly have a problem with it; but I'd support banning gambling entirely. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/you-can-t-ask-that/series/2/vi... (Does iView work outside Austra…

For my brother's bachelor party, I went to a casino for basically the first time. We were there from quite early in the afternoon and it's absurd the clientele that can be considered "regulars". As my brother darkly called it: "You have to be careful, otherwise you will lose your trailer". Meanwhile at least one old man spent several hours assuring us of his "system" to "beat the odds" while he lost hundreds of dollars, never once showing even the slightest understanding of what "the house always wins" means. Indeed, the rules for play for the card games were artificially more complicated than they could be, in my opinion this was done in order to more confuse players and make them think they found a "hole" in the rules to "beat the system"

Too many people, especially here, espouse the "but gambling is entertainment" line. I don't buy it. I've spent thousands on video games, and sitting in front of a slot machine built by "Konami", a literal video game publisher, and it was abysmal from an entertainment aspect. Nobody would pay to play these games if there wasn't some internal pretending that "I can beat the system"

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

#185

Post by mrguyorama »

dillondoyle wrote: post #179
soulofmischief wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instanc…

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

There are hundreds of different ways to get entertainment. Humanity will not be worse off if gambling is entirely banned. How much "entertainment value" does daydreaming from a lottery ticket really bring? Why should those addicts be subjected to the misery they experience dealing with their addiction just so you can pretend to win the lottery in your head? You could just as easily spend your time pretending that you find a giant, valuable diamond in the dirt.

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

#186

Post by WalterBright »

mrguyorama wrote: post #181
WalterBright wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What strong evidence do you have for this thought terminating cliche?

1. The sales pitch they use to sell people on supporting them.

2. Every person who wants to code their morality into law.

How about all those people who thought it ok to exterminate anyone who wouldn't convert to their religion?

It just goes on and on.

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

#187

Post by WalterBright »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #163
WalterBright wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people who have.

Who have what? Did they become wealthy, end of story? Saving up money to be wealthy, without the rest of the context, is reasonably common. If they either needed to specifically curate their lottery habits to become wealthy, or if they failed to become wealthy because of their lottery habits, then I'm interested. Because that's the part that I'm betting is quite rare. And it's also the part that needs to be pretty co…

Turned a modest income into becoming a millionaire by long term investing in a basket of stocks.

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

#188

Post by WalterBright »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #165
WalterBright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does your use of “self-made" have any concrete definition? I looked on the related website and the very first blog entry is about how you can teach your children the skills they identify as leading to wealth. And yet, it appears that the claim is that, in general, people don't get taught these skills, and some people discover them through sheer grit and determination. Which seems contradictory. And that's putting asi…

Self made as in did not inherit their wealth.

> people don't get taught these skills

The knowledge is not hard to come by. The book lays it out in simple terms. There's nothing magical about it.

> I'm not sure that concept translates well into the commonly accepted definition of millionaire.

The book is not about a tortured definition of a millionaire or absurd stories about how their wealth was obtained.

It's a quick read and the book is what, a couple bucks? Why not just read it, and then criticize it?

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

#189

Post by WalterBright »

TimPC wrote: post #158
WalterBright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This number is going down with every home inheritance and isn’t stable across generations. It’s largely a function of homes being bought for low values appreciating to over $1 million and not a function of labour markets.

It doesn't sound like you read the book. Before dismissing it, I suggest taking a look at it. It costs $1.38. Not really a big investment in something that could make you wealthy. It's well worth it even if it has only one good idea you can use in it.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

bigjimmyk3 wrote: post #176
WalterBright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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