Posted on 11/29/2012 8:11:47 AM PST by ExxonPatrolUs
[Households that earn at most $13,000 a year spend 9 percent of their money on lottery tickets. ]
With the Powerball lottery jackpot reaching a record $500 million, people from around the country are flocking to local convenience stores to try their luck. The majority of those standing in line for tickets and joining office pools are likely not habitual lottery devotees, but rather casual players who decided to get in on the fun once the media reported the unprecedented size of the pot. However, the everyday lottery business is a much grimmer affair, relying overwhelmingly on "poverty, habit, and desperation," says Natasha Lennard at Salon:
Studies of lottery ticket sales in North Carolina, South Carolina, California, Texas and Connecticut found that per capita lottery sales are consistently higher in the poorest counties and tickets are more likely to be purchased by unemployed individuals.
Statistics from South Carolina highlight the lottery’s reliance on low earners: people in households earning under $40,000 made up 54 percent of frequent players, while constituting only 28 percent of the state’s population. Meanwhile, a PBS report earlier this year showed that, for America’s very poorest, the lottery is a heavy expenditure: Households that earn at most $13,000 a year spend 9 percent of their money on lottery tickets.
“Lotteries set off a vicious cycle that not only exploits low-income individuals’ desires to escape poverty but also directly prevents them from improving upon their financial situations,” a 2008 study by Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business noted. The study, aligning with national statistics, found that people who felt poor were found to buy double the number of lottery tickets.
One of the main justifications behind lotteries is that the government — at both the state and federal levels — pockets a portion of the jackpot to finance education programs and the like. Consequently, the lottery has often been compared to a regressive tax, one that costs the poor more proportionately than it does the rich. The obvious counterpoint is that, unlike a tax, the decision to buy a lottery ticket is entirely voluntary — no one is holding a gun to your head. Still, critics say, the lottery is undeniably in large part funded by the poor, who are more susceptible to the jackpot's promise of lavish riches.
“Somebody said that the lottery is a tax on stupidity,”
Yes, that too.
My favorite are the idiots that were complaining about “Bush’s high gas prices” as the drop a $20 on scratch offs. I called many of them morons to their faces and just got blank stares in return.
The stats in the article are also the reason why bankruptcies are extremely frequent with lottery winners. Poor people do things that keep them poor, rich people do things that make them rich.
Being broke is a temporary economic situation, being poor is a state of mind. Good thing we are governing in a manner that creates more poor thinkers.
I could not disagree more with this article. Nothing paid voluntarily, for whatever reason, can be a tax. Whether spending money on lottery tickets is wise makes for a fair argument, but to suggest it is a tax (because the poor are too stupid to think for themselves, or elect not to?) is to redefine a well-understood word.
if it’s a tax, then it’s a tax on the willing. the unwilling don’t have to play...
Yea I bought 4 tickets last night thinking it was going to be $4. Apparently they raised the math tax last year sometime. I don't play enough to know that. So I got dinged on my not paying attention taxes.
If I would have known I would have only bought 2 tickets.
I think I've bought four lottery tickets in my life, and it's been years since my last one. You are correct that you get a lot of dreams for your dollar, simply musing about winning, but I think for me, it was an even healthier endeavor.
Thinking about what I would do with the money forced me to really take a long hard look at my values and priorities and those persons and causes I hold most dear. In doing so, I also concluded that the odds of winning are so infinitesimally small that if God truly intended for me to win, He would give me a clear sign; hence, until and unless I get such a sign to play, I won't.
I bought 1 ticket. With the PowerPlay option, that was $3. I gave her a five, but the gat at the counter gave me only a dollar in change. When I challenged her, she said she though I’d gotten two tickets. I had to show her my ticket to get my full change back. I may be math challenged, but I know how to make change!
Actually, the correct method would be to pass edicts to force the winners to share the money with those less fortunate. It is more dependable than simply giving away free tickets.
I posted a twitter saying that.
Funny, we haven’t heard the tee vee people bring this up with all of their brilliance!!
Love, love, love that cartoon. :)
Powerball play? It’s a SNAP with your EBT card.
It’s not a tax at all - free people freely choose to buy lottery tickets or they don’t.
Oh, and show me a household that “earns” less than $13,000 a year but doesn’t get at least that amount or more in tax-free taxpayer-funded government assistance and I’ll show you some beautiful swampland for sale in Florida.
Go post that commie crap somewhere else, lib.
Seen on a bumper sticker some years back:
“The Lottery: A Tax on People Who Are Bad at Math”
States should allow people to use federal benefits- like food stamps- to buy tickets.
It’s a 50% profit for the state!
trickle down economics is now commie crap?
:unsure:
I could not disagree more with this article. Nothing paid voluntarily, for whatever reason, can be a tax. Whether spending money on lottery tickets is wise makes for a fair argument, but to suggest it is a tax (because the poor are too stupid to think for themselves, or elect not to?) is to redefine a well-understood word.
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Tax Schmax. It’s wealth redistribution. There’s a million different ways the gubmint gets their hands in your pockets.
I’m on record for stating we need to tax the poor. And I mean severly. It’s a well known economic principle that if you want LESS of something, then tax MORE of it.
Tax the rich? Sure. Look at how that’s working out. I say we tax the poor. Start with ending the billions of dollars we throw at welfare and entitlement programs.
Redistribute that money back to the Makers who paid it and watch and see how fast our economy turns around.
Anyone who purchases a lottery ticket should have to forfeit any government assistance he’s receiving. If someone has enough money to piss away on lottery tickets, then he doesn’t need any of my hard-earned tax dollars to keep him from starving.
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