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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

#161

Post by Falkon1313 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #63

I'm curious, the article talks about the issue where a small number of, essentially, addicts, are responsible for a huge portion of total sales (10% of players are responsible for 2/3 of total revenue). I find this interesting because this pattern repeats in a number of different "potentially addictive" pursuits, where the pursuit can be a pleasant and welcome diversion when done in moderation, but is ruinous for add…

Sure, that's easy.

Consider where lotteries come from - everyone in the room puts their name in the hat and then one winner is drawn (or maybe also a 2nd prize and 3rd prize). But it's simple - 1 person, 1 chance.

You just can't buy more in that system. So the 'problem gambler' that blows most of their paycheck on lottery tickets just isn't even possible.

Maybe the limit doesn't need to be strictly 1, but even just having a limit, low enough to not be too much of a hardship even to a poverty-level person, would still be a simple solution.

People sure wouldn't like it though.

They'd immediately start working on ways to get around that limit. Same as they would if you limited them to only buying 1 6-pack of beer per week.

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

#162

Post by Falkon1313 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #23
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…

> 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 for the dog and you would never have ants anymore?"

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

#163

Post by Dylan16807 »

WalterBright wrote: post #139
Dylan16807 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 common if the message is supposed to work as a lottery-relevant message.

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

#164

Post by tcptomato »

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.

You say it like it's something bad. Or are you for the abolishment of the FDA?

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

#165

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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.

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 aside the weird concept where someone who earns 10 million and spends 9 million on stuff, is ranked as the same as someone who lives a meagre life and dies with 1 million in the bank. I'm not sure that concept translates well into the commonly accepted definition of millionaire.

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

#166

Post by nemo44x »

somehnguy wrote: post #16
nemo44x wrote: post #14

Quoted post unavailable.

If it's so wrong - what's your reasoning for why such neighborhoods end up the way they are?

Because poverty strips any aspiration for the future because you become hopeless. Little pleasures like a cigarette or dream of winning make you feel good for a short period.

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

#167

Post by Tozen »

Aunche wrote: post #150
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…

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…

You are misunderstanding the point that I made. I'm not saying that gambling isn't a vice nor am I condoning such behavior, put rather the state allowing or pushing such a vice disproportionally into poor Black neighborhoods is a demonstration of being corrupt and exploitative. Selling nearly unachievable "dreams" to poor desperate people is depravity, even more so when the state is sanctioning the marketing and advertising campaigns being directed at them.

The view of such a situation is further demonstrated by the state minimizing any possible benefits from the profits of the lotteries to the same Black poor neighborhoods they are taking advantage of. They are primarily funneling money out of those neighborhoods, from the people that can least afford it, to any and everywhere else.

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

#168

Post by bitshiftfaced »

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…

> 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?

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

#169

Post by bitshiftfaced »

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.

You have to buy the machines, receipt rolls, maintenance, pay people to run it, etc. The only way to have a sustainable non-negative expected value would be to pay expenses out of taxes.

I'd expect that many tax payers would prefer their money to go to other places than for gamblers to have better odds.

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

#170

Post by bobkazamakis »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #168
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…

> 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?
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