It serms incredible to me to give over a billion dollars to a random person.
Not really.
The lottery is paid for by those who all have an equal chance of winning that prize. Also, the profits from lotteries are usually spent on social funds etc.
I feel more conflicted about thr fact that it preys on addiction and those who buy the most lottery tickets are often those who can least afford them. I find that much more grotesque than a random person getting very lucky, but to each their own.
Half would go to the government no?
In the US, close to half of the winnings do go to the lottery, plus a portion of each lottery ticket usually goes to fund some government agency. Schools, programs for the impoverished and disenfranchised, etc.
The real question, in my opinion, is if you are willing to spend that much money on a ticket, why aren’t you willing to spend that much money on just outright funding government programs? Imagine if 100% of what someone paid for a ticket went to programs for the disenfranchised? That could make real difference.
Probably worth noting that, at least in places like Texas, they take the funds from the lottery, allocate it to school, and then take the same amount of money out of schools to fund whatever bullshit they want.
And then in some places they decide to divert the school money for a new Raiders stadium.
I spend about $10 per year on lottery tickets. I pay upwards of $40k in taxes, much of which is funneled to “disenfranchised”. I’m good, thanks.
Ok, but if you had a guarantee that your $10 would go directly to the disenfranchised with no chances of returning millions to you, how would that change things?
Handing money out to the “disenfranchised” solves nothing, thus it never ends. I am for real solutions, like education and a strong family unit. But, you know, having that opinion means I am racist/classist/whatever “ist”.
Love the quote marks around disenfranchised. Real classy.
Let’s see… cursory glance at post history indicates… Yep, right wing, anti union and against a living wage. That all tracks.
I think you are both arguing about an institution giving money to random people right? Just the amount of both money given and number of recipients are changing right?
Quote marks because “disenfranchised” is subjective. And wow, you have mad skills to look at someone’s post history. Aren’t you quite the haxxor?
I consider myself moderate. Lefty tools such as yourself label anyone that disagrees with them as right wing racist maga nazis. Fuck you.
I am anti union. Unions served a great purpose 100 years ago. Now they are corrupt shake down organizations that contribute to inflation and drive jobs out of the country. But if someone wants to join one, I don’t care, it’s none of my business. Just don’t use my tax dollars to fund any of it.
Living wage. There is this idiotic entitlement mentality that people somehow deserve a “living wage” simply for consuming oxygen. Here is the truth: people are paid what they are worth. If you are providing real value to an employer, they will pay you enough to retain you. If they don’t, find another employer. Rinse and repeat.
But nah, it’s easier to blame shortcomings on billionaires/Trump/“the man”/“disenfranchisement” and hope some politician will send you money for your vote.
Maybe you are racist and/or classist.
Maybe you are an idiot.
You realize that most studies show that direct cash payments to people on welfare/needy return better results, right?
This bullshit is so wrong on so many levels. It’s laughable. I’m beginning to think you don’t pay $40,000 in taxes, unless maybe it’s from an inheritance though. Out of a trust fund every month. Nobody with actual life experience believes any of this bullshit.
You’re the type of people we’re talking about when we say “eat the rich”, “bring the guillotine” or “burn them alive”, it seems.
You make $200k a year, not bad!
What is better:
- 10$, of which 2$ goes towards taxes, 2$ goes to the winner, and 6$ goes to the people who own the lottery
- 10$ of which directly goes to taxes
You pay 40k in taxes then you’re going fine so stfu you have no right to complain about the less fortunate who need a social safety net.
The gall and sense of entitlement you assholes have is fucking astounding.
That depends on the government in question. For example, the Canadian government does not have a claim on any kind of lottery or game show winnings.
On the first year I believe.
To my understanding, and a quick Google search, winnings are never taxed.
Correct. And they’ll get your money for you if you win big in Vegas.
Lottery > Casinos for sure
It’s grotesque for ANYONE to have a billion dollars. Arguably the lottery winner is the only one to achieve that wealth by even sort-of ethical means.
By that measure, playing the stock exchange is just an advanced version of lottery.
It is
Yep. Kind of ethical if you ask me… :P
Not really. Dividends always include value stolen from the workforce and the end customer in low pay and shoddier quality as enforced via a policy of shareholder primacy.
Anyone who hold stocks in a private company is stealing from the public.
Gross oversimplification
Not since Dodge v. Ford Motor Company
Das Kapital explains its inevitability.
Where is an ethical place I can put my retirement money then?
A coffee can? A vault? In our agrarian economy, your extended family would take care of you in your geriatric years, but now because of the nuclear family we have to manage our own retirement (and suffer intergenerational mental illness).
401Ks and such are the proffered substitutes, but in good times they depend on exploitation. In bad times (such as right after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis) they collapse with the rest of the economy and the banks throw their customers to the elements.
It’s a situation much like the US dependence on cars, since alternatives are dismantled or delayed, and regulations turn our urban areas into an untraversable sprawl. Cars are bad, but we’ve been systematically stripped of alternatives.
My guess you never heard of stock manipulation.
The Spiffing Brit enters the chat
Technically you are investing in stocks they allow you to. Perfectly ethical.
It is, except for the way that money is derived from the labour of the workers, and the fact that you’re not likely to make lifestyle changing amounts of money without already having a significant amount of money to gamble in the first place.
Not to mention the system is arguably much more “rigged” thanks to the major players in the scene, when you buy a lottery ticket you aren’t competing against giant corporations that spend millions on figuring out the best way to buy lottery tickets.
Well it’s like a lottery but with more variables and where better knowledge or analysis can mean some "players"are more likely to win than others. It’s inherently less fair than a lottery, which should be totally random.
there are people who have over a billion dollars worth of positive impact on the world.
That’s not grotesque and that’s not wealth. But still a nice thought to keep in mind.
I wish these people were as famous as the loud-ass billionaires we have.
There certainly have been such people. But none were ever billionaires. Such people do something which creates great value. Billionaires are parasites who do nothing but siphon value away from society.
Albert Einstein, Nikolai Vavilov, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr, Alan Turing, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Faraday, Nelson Mandela, Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Harriet Tubman, Louis Pasteur, etc.
State lotteries are in effect a tax on the uneducated; largely used to fund education.
But part of the reason they exist is that, in their absence, people spontaneously come up with even worse forms of gambling, like the old numbers game that funds the expansion of organized crime.
Most lottery players, especially scratch-ticket players, would be better off sticking that money under their mattresses or in credit-union accounts. However, again, when there are no gambling games around, people spontaneously invent them; abolishing state lotteries would not cause that money to go under mattresses or into credit unions.
largely used to fund education
Alas, nope.
Many states have laws saying that for every lottery dollar that goes to education, a dollar comes out of the education budget. Usually lottery profits end up in a general fund, the whole education thing is a legislated smoke screen.
The main function of state run lotteries is to take money away from organized criminals and give it to elected criminals instead.
That’s incredible if true
Most states, there’s this association that it supports education, but there’s this bizarre scheme where for every lottery dollar that goes into the education budget, $1 from the education budget comes back out into the general fund.
So you end up just robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of thing. It doesn’t actually add additional money to these causes that lotteries market themselves as helping.
a majority of the 42 states that run lotteries claim the games increase funding for education. But a CBS News investigation has found that most of the lottery sales never make it to a classroom.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-lottery-shortchanging-schools/
But when you take away the amount shelled out for prizes (60% on ticket sales) and the cut to the lottery dealers, along with fees and operating expenses, it leaves about one third of the handle ($3.37 billion) for “aid to education”.
Moreover, NYS Assemblyman David DiPietro (R-147th District) claims the money is not always used for education expenses, at least not in the traditional sense.
According to DiPietro, the money on occasion has been “pinched off” by the state, to pay for a variety of items, including attorney’s fees for construction projects and even to pave roads near schools.
Before all the apes nonsense, this was where people would learn what “fungible” means
Wish it were for something less depressing
Sounds like fraud 😁
Out of curiosity: What is considered illegal gambling?
Gambling that is prohibited by local laws.
Each state has its own restrictions and laws so really it depends on your location.
When the government doesn’t control it.
Any gambling that isn’t regularly audited and controlled by the state. I work in the casino industry, I have sets of reports and evidence I have to run and provide to the state daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Then every two years they get a room in our building to full audit everything again end comb through everything we do to make sure we comply with all of the hundreds of controls across the 25 chapters in our gaming control book. Anything not subjected to and complying with that is illegal.
Wait til you find out about inheritance
It is a deep and philosophical question that must be looked at from all sides. But after much debate and consideration among our greatest scholars the universal truth is a question in of itself. Am I the random person?
if you buy a ticket, you just might be !
If someone inherits a billion dollar, how is that not just given to a random person?
If their family is that rich, they usually have gotten some money of it before the other died.
Chances are the person who inherits a billion dollars is already used to dealing with large amounts of money, and likely has the support structure of accountants and advisors that will help them deal with it.
A lottery winner is usually middle-class or lower, the type of person whose life would be changed by a few thousand dollars, and likely has no idea how to manage wealth of that size.
It’s not as grotesque as the mundane realities that we accept as normal under capitalism
Far better than the shitheads that add nothing to the world and become billionaires through financial manipulation and employee exploitation.
Seriously, 1.2b a drop in the ocean compared to generationally wealthy who leech off of society paying almost no tax by extending tax liability to infinity through gifting and buying politicians who create loopholes for them.
I can’t think of a single person who became a billionaire, yet added nothing of a value to the world. Sure they may have manipulated and exploited while at it, but there’s still usually a product of some sort in the end, and the fact that they became wealthy indicates there was demand for said product.
If someone adds value to the world, but does so through exploitation of the workforce, scamming their customers, or tax evasion. They didn’t actually add anything to the world. They are net negative.
That’s an argument for the product, but the system still promotes shitheads to the heads of the companies that deliver said products.
And that still means shitheads are shitheads, regardless of the amount of money they have.
Net negative matters.
I could, for example, kill every animal in the forest then claim how good it is that the plants grew so much that year without so many things eating them. In the long run, it’s very negative however.
Same for billionaires. You could say how great it is that we have electric cars, but who gets hurt and could it have been done without harm to people or society?
First of all, they are not getting $1.2B. The lump sum cash value is $551.7M. The usually reported jackpots are presented in terms of the value of a 30 year annuity.
Second, those winnings are before taxes. After taxes, depending on the state, the person will walk away with $280m-350m.
Now, sure, that is still an absurd amount, but still like 1/4th the stated jackpot.
That’s more reasonable.
Also most lottery winners end up dead or bankrupt within a few years of winning.
The Google response seems to agree with you, but this Berkeley study says the opposite:
https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Papers/kaplan.pdf
(Fixed link.)
Dunno if it’s bad for mobile or just a bad link but I got a 404.
I guess that’s my point
I think it’s somewhat charming tbh. Everyone gets a tiny, miniscule chance of never having to work again. I rarely buy a ticket, but when I do I spend all week imagining all the fun things I’d do with the money.
As the other poster said, though, it’s sad when folks get addicted to it.
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It’s because most people who win don’t have good habits with money, and they don’t know how to keep their mouth shut. They tell people, and they spend it frivolously.
You find out fast if your friends or family love you or not.
I mean the very fact that they are spending money on the lottery tells me that chances are they have bad spending habits.
And please, you, yes you, the person that buys lottery tickets and feels the need to explain to me how it’s ok, we get it you’re built different and aren’t addicted or whatever, but there are still so many better things you could be spending it on.
“voluntary tax on the poor”
You sound like a recent Econ grad wielding little fun facts you learned to throw in peoples faces. Unnecessarily judgmental. People waste money on all kinds of things every day. It’s not a problem if it isn’t being done to inappropriate levels.
Hurr durr tax on the poor.
Spending money on something that is less likey to return a profit than it is to get hit by lightning isn’t exactly an indicator of financial literacy, tbf.
No but see he made personal attacks, which proves their point…somehow.
But an insignificant amount of money for an insignificant change of being rich isn’t a big deal either.
How much return do you get for a Starbucks? Some things are just for enjoyment and people enjoy the existence of that chance, however slim.
Not me personally, but I totally get it.
The problem is if you spend an insignificant amount of money every day the total amount doesn’t stay insignificant for long.
Absolutely, but that’s a very different point to the one I was responding to. The only point I was making is that plenty of people responsibly waste money on things every day, for some people it’s the lottery, for others it’s Starbucks.
Buying a lottery ticket doesn’t instantly mean you’re bad with money.
What is $1 x 100? 1,000?
Why is that relevant to people who responsibly play the lottery?
The lottery is literally a regressive tax both in concept and practice and I’m not really sure how you can view it any other way.
Ok but you sound like an asshole trying to belittle someone for the most basic facts. I love how you talk down and try and frame me as a youth, guessing you’re either pretty young yourself or need to stop with pathetic ageism personal attacks instead of debating the subject.
Also I guarantee you buy lottery tickets and are mad at the second paragraph, stay mad salty kid, spend your retirement fund on little pieces of paper.
I love how you talk down and try and frame me as a youth, guessing you’re either pretty young yourself
You chastise me for implying you are young, and then immediately call me young.
You then attack the use of ageism and proceed to do it to me after.
Wow what inconsistent stupidity.
I’m sure there are 100 things you spend money on that we could say the same for.
Jesus, people act like it’s impossible to play the lottery without ruining your life.
It’s possible to do hard drugs and not ruin your life too, but I wouldn’t suggest it.
But you can appreciate that some do it without ruining their life right?
It doesn’t make them good by any means. But people have done drugs and had good lives afterwards, just like playing the lottery.
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You can stop any time and prove them wrong
I don’t play the lottery at all.
I just don’t also think that everyone who does is financially irresponsible.
I may act different if I actually saw half a billion dollars in my account but I would I’d buy a house and car for each family member, save 20mil to live off the interest, and then donate the rest towards projects like spine repair medicine or desalination or something. Or maybe buy a shitload of solar panels for homes.
How about lending your old pal kryllic a couple of bucks?
And that’s why it sucks.
it is weird how people say that getting a lot of money, the thing whole world is based on, all humans work every day to get, is the worst thing that happened to them.
Shakespeare - shot by someone who was trying to get his money
David Lee Edwards - was a convict, spent a lot in several years, lost all his money and died.
Jeffree Dampier: was sleeping with his wife’s sister, shot and killed by her and her husband.
Urooj Khan: coughs blood and dies the next day of getting his check. Cyanide poisoning.
Michael Karoll: “parties, coke, hookers, cars”
Harrell Jr: spent too much, lent too much, killed himself after his wife left him.
Stories go on and on. Almost all of them can be linked to already unstable, unwell people, their inability to manage the money properly or them not shutting up about the huge cash pile they recently sat on, to the trashy, money crazed people around them.
They should split it up into $100,000 increments. Yeah, that’s not a billion, but that could still be life-changing for thousands of families.
That’s not how lotteries work.
In the UK, you can take a lump sum or instalments just like this . Infact your get more if you take the instalments.
The entire idea of a statewide lottery seems awful to me. I think there should be a cap on the size and reach of any one lottery. It’s been shown to be more harmful than helpful to dump millions of dollars on one person’s bank account.
Then you’ll feel better knowing that in the US that whomever wins that Powerball will end up with less than half the amount they won. Taxes will eat up about 60% of the winnings .
And then, statistically, their life will be ruined so… Grotesque indeed
I would be willing to fall on that sword for the unlucky soul that wins that lottery. I actually knew someone that won the 10 million publishers clearance house back in the 1980’s. Classic story of they were dirt poor before the win and dirt poorer about 5 years after the win. Banks lined up to give them loans and they took them all since the prize didn’t pay out in a lump sum. After the interest their yearly checks and more were gone… But they had “stuff” for awhile.
And of course the US government only does cool and awesome things with that money that everybody in the country benefits from.
San Francisco spends $700 million a year dealing with their roughly 7,000 unhoused people. They could just give every one of them $100,000 a year and spend less, and probably have better results.
Pretty sure that if they didn’t spend 700 million, there would be quite a lot more than 7000 unhoused people.
No they couldn’t. If being homeless paid six figures there would suddenly be a lot more homeless people.
