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Most of the people that I know who are heavy lottery players are barely making ends meet.
This just goes to show that people have misplaced priorities.
I have long imagined that poor people would be more likely to figure that playing the lottery - as long as the odds are - is their best chance of getting rich. After all, whatever else they have been doing clearly is not working for them.
Seeing this thread, I decided to see what I could find online. Apparently there is some interesting psychology involved, and the middle class is not immune to it.
"In the study published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, participants who were made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets as a comparison group that was made to feel subjectively more affluent. The Carnegie Mellon findings point to poverty's central role in people's decisions to buy lottery tickets.
A second experiment reported in the paper found that indirectly reminding participants that, while different income groups face unequal outcomes in education, jobs and housing, everyone has equal chances of winning the lottery induced an increase in the number of lottery tickets purchased. The group given this reminder purchased 1.31 tickets, compared with 0.54 for the group not given such a reminder."
As Nita says, it's totally voluntary but if you do wish to engage in the behavior of playing the numbers (as it was called when the mob ran it) now you have to go thru gov't and pay them. Many taxes are really voluntary. The tobacco tax, for example--if you don't want to pay it, just don't smoke. It's voluntary, yet we still call it a 'tax.'
I believe that is a poor analogy since the tobacco part is what is voluntary in your example, not the tax.
One can certainly be poor and choose to not pay for lottery tickets, so it isn't a tax on the state of being poor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wutitiz
What it really is, is a con.
It is fairly transparent to be called a con don't you think? In a con someone is attempting to mislead someone about their chances of success or monetary gain, whereas a lottery puts it right out there your odds of winning are 176 million to 1.
I submit you won't find anyone of sound mental health who buys a lottery ticket thinking they are actually going to win. It is just hope and dreams.
In CANADA...a pack of smokes is ten bucks...most of it TAX...The government uses the reasoning that taking more money from the poor..through this addiction tax will help them quit..reality is it just makes them more poor...Gambling...well the house always wins...makes the poor more poor..but that is where the rich have always gotten their money...FROM THE POOR...cos other rich people are not about to hand over their cash...........but the poor will.........They are desperate and easy targets..
It is so much easier to become president of the United States than win the lottery.. look at how Obama got in. From community organizer to president. Like winning the jackpot of politics.
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Taratova
It is so much easier to become president of the United States than win the lottery.. look at how Obama got in. From community organizer to president. Like winning the jackpot of politics.
You skipped the Senator part for some reason.
That's like saying Tim Allen went from drug dealer to Hilarious Santa. There's no in between?
If you look at statistics, the worst time to buy is when the pot is big. If you play the lottery, your chances of winning are greater the smaller the pot. If it's a local state lottery and the numbers are low then your chances of winning go even higher. Depending on your age, it pays better to accept the annual payment instead of the cash option. When I use to play once a month, I walked into a store and asked for two Louisiana Lotto tickets. Cashier looked at me funny and said, "why you want dat? It's only$250,000". I asked her how much money did she make a year. $250,000 isn't enough to retire, but it's enough to pay off debts and live a bit more comfortable.
I believe that is a poor analogy since the tobacco part is what is voluntary in your example, not the tax.
One can certainly be poor and choose to not pay for lottery tickets, so it isn't a tax on the state of being poor.
It is fairly transparent to be called a con don't you think? In a con someone is attempting to mislead someone about their chances of success or monetary gain, whereas a lottery puts it right out there your odds of winning are 176 million to 1.
I submit you won't find anyone of sound mental health who buys a lottery ticket thinking they are actually going to win. It is just hope and dreams.
I disagree, I think the analogy between tobacco and lotto is valid. In both cases, if you choose to engage in a voluntary activity, you must in effect pay the gov't in conjunction with it. Try setting up your own numbers game with better payouts than what the gov't offers. You and your customers will be arrested and prosecuted. The act of buying a lotto ticket is voluntary, but there is compulsion embedded in the law surrounding it.
If the tobacco tax can be called a tax, I don't see why the lotto can't. It's just a debate over semantics, though.
Perhaps you have a point regarding transparency. 'Con' perhaps is not quite the right word. Maybe more along the lines of hucksterism--sales gimmickry to lure in the foolish, but of their own volition. Not as bad as, say a Bernie Madoff, but still based on deception and exploitation of human weakness.
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