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Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

theatlantic.com

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Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#61

Post by godzillabrennus »

sremani wrote: post #38

For me lotteries is one of the reason, I have grown skeptical of State. 1. They Lie, Lie about funding schools and lottery is the only way to do it. 2. Lie about the Prize money, the advertisements of lottery are untruthful and a private entity would be charged with fraud. 3. The practice of gaming the game, i.e. they try to make lotteries popular and sink a lot of money for advertising, they claim 50% goes for prize…

I agree that government should step out of it and all gambling with published, vetted by an independent authority and fully transparent procedurally gambling models should be legal for private industry to pursue. Let government tax them like they do alcohol and tobacco.

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#62

Post by aznpwnzor »

I don't see it as preying on the poor. I see it as a hobby / investment of the poor due to thousands of other factors that already prey on the poor.

Imagine you have 0 chance of having any savings and barely staying ahead on your mortgage. The breakdown is this:

upper class: easy access to what you want and need middle class: easy access to what you need lower class: difficult access to what you need

If you are never going to have disposable income and forever be barely a paycheck ahead, what investments are available to you? You raise your child as well as you can for the school district and streets you live on, at best they go to a low-tier state school -> more debt. You can't retrain for a job because you are half a paycheck away from needing to take a second job.

In this situation, the outcomes are this: don't play lottery -> 100% stay poor play lottery -> 99.99999% stay poor

what do you choose?

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#63

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

liber8 wrote: post #56
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #18

"When you play the lottery, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But it's better than using drugs or alcohol because when you use drugs or alcohol, you always lose" - "American Movie" People who don't play the lottery are always so quick to dismiss it. They disregard how accessible it is - you don't need a next-gen console or flat-screen tv, just cash - as they disregard how independently fun it is - you could b…

"you could be sitting alone in a dark room with nothing but a lottery ticket in your hand and be perfectly satisfied with fantasies of winning" This is one of the biggest reasons I dislike the lottery, from a societal perspective: it satisfies people who would otherwise have an incentive to go out and create their own success. You can see this anytime the jackpots get big enough that non-players buy tickets. There is…

Change a few words and you could be talking about masturbation. Do you only masturbate "one-day a year"?

It's worth noting that, historically, haranguing people on values without sufficiently addressing their incentive network often does little to change them.

So what would you do differently?

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#65

Post by mindslight »

wrong_variable wrote: post #35
crazy1van wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his caveat of "barring negative impact on others" pretty much covers these cases.

> "barring negative impact on others" You think taking what little money poor people have from them via allowing them to spend it on lottery does not have social consequences ?

This concept of "social consequences" is essentially a flipped framing of a situation to incorporate an implicit utility function of whomever is using the term.

If a person or group of people does not act in a way that benefits you, they still have not harmed you. It simply means they have not chosen to conform to your expectations.

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#66

Post by nostrebored »

Amezarak wrote: post #51
nostrebored wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spend some more time around casinos. Watch your opinion change as you realize what depressing things it says about our society that we let people weep on the pavement because they've lost their house on a literal crapshoot. Spending a good bit of my formative years in Biloxi seriously changed my attitude around all of this.

It's good to hear that from someone else. The degree to which the casino industry in Biloxi is celebrated as a heroic engine of economic development and generosity depresses me. The Coast was no utopia before the casinos. And sure, yeah, the casinos employ a bunch of people and some tax money goes to local schools. But seeing people - often poor people - gamble away their lives, seeing how much prostitution came into…

Think about the tax revenue!

Lol...

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#67

Post by maerF0x0 »

kdamken wrote: post #16
maerF0x0 wrote: post #10

A lottery is a better investment than other crap the poor often buy. Crack, TVs, xboxes, alcohol all have a EROI of 0. A lottery at least is >0 . Better would be if we sold partials of VT(I) in the store at lottery ticket prices. $2 for a near 0 chance at 1B, or $2 for a near 100% chance at $4 given enough time.

This is a sad truth that's a lot less flashy of a headline, so it's not surprising it's not covered. You're unlikely to see an article with the title: "People who buy stupid shit they don't need and can't afford shocked to find they are still broke". Much easier to blame the lottery. Yes, poorer people like to buy lottery tickets. They want a chance to rise up and be rich, and there's really no other way most of them…

> They want a chance to rise up and be rich, and there's really no other way most of them can ever do that.

Then maybe lottery tickets are actually smart.

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#68

Post by timbowhite »

nostrebored wrote: post #37
calebm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I came to say. I'm not a gambler, but the idea of making gambling illegal seems insane to me in "the land of the free".

Spend some more time around casinos. Watch your opinion change as you realize what depressing things it says about our society that we let people weep on the pavement because they've lost their house on a literal crapshoot. Spending a good bit of my formative years in Biloxi seriously changed my attitude around all of this.

> what depressing things it says about our society that we let people weep on the pavement because they've lost their house on a literal crapshoot.

The freedom allowing people to make those types of decisions trumps that argument.

Where would you draw the line and determine what we should "let" people do with their own possessions?

So you would not let a person gamble their house on a crap shoot? How about their car? Their watch? $5?

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#69

Post by Amezarak »

timbowhite wrote: post #68
nostrebored wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spend some more time around casinos. Watch your opinion change as you realize what depressing things it says about our society that we let people weep on the pavement because they've lost their house on a literal crapshoot. Spending a good bit of my formative years in Biloxi seriously changed my attitude around all of this.

> what depressing things it says about our society that we let people weep on the pavement because they've lost their house on a literal crapshoot. The freedom allowing people to make those types of decisions trumps that argument. Where would you draw the line and determine what we should "let" people do with their own possessions? So you would not let a person gamble their house on a crap shoot? How about their car?…

I think we could make a distinction between allowing people to make those types of decisions and actively enabling and encouraging those types of decisions.

If you want to gamble your house away in a private bet, go for it, but the local government shouldn't move heaven and earth to get a casino built to enable thousands and thousands of people to make those decisions in the name of tax revenue.

Similarly, I don't think you would be taking away people's freedom in any meaningful way if, say, you limited lottery transactions to say, $20.

Re: Lotteries: America's $70B Shame

#70

Post by ryandrake »

smt88 wrote: post #59
bbarn wrote: post #42

My father once won $100,000 from a scratch off ticket. It was a $20.00 scratch off ticket. I gave him crap for years over it because between playing Keno, and buying other scratch offs, he's probably spent close to that trying to recreate the effect. The thing is, he's very serious about his lottery. He enters every losing ticket into a second chance registration on Maryland's lottery site. (This was how I got him to…

I'm not surprised that there are anecdotes of people who play in a (mostly) harmless way. One question I have is whether there might be another way for your dad to have an equally fulfilling amount of fun without losing as much money. It would depend on the individual, obviously. The problem with lotteries is that many of the players aren't like your dad. There are some serious ethical questions that arise when you t…

> 4) Is playing the lottery an expression of hopelessness for some people? They know that their $5 is never going to multiply to $10 (the way it might for a wealthier person), so it's easier to risk that $5 for a chance to win $5 million.

I think this is key. Turning $5 into $10 is impossible. Turning $5MM into $10MM is inevitable. The Lottery is a band-aid to treat the symptom (hopelessness). Address the root cause, which is the lack of opportunity for economic mobility.

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