Posted on 07/10/2015 3:02:37 PM PDT by NRx
...But there is one set of related policy ideas that would dramatically help the poor and should not be ideologically divisive. How about a renewed effort to help the poor by refusing to cheat them?
I am referring to a broad and growing collaboration between government and business to systematically defraud and exploit the poor through state lotteries, payday lending and payday gambling.
The lottery is a particularly awful example of political corruption. Here government is raising revenue by selling the Powerball dream of wealth without work. Studies in a number of states have shown that lottery ticket sales are concentrated in poor communities, that poor people spend a larger portion of their income on tickets and that the poor are more likely to view the lottery as an investment. “This could be your ticket out,” promised one typical billboard in a distressed Chicago neighborhood.
Think on this a moment. In a place where government has utterly failed to provide adequate education and public services, government is using advertising to exploit the desperation of poor people in order to raise revenue that funds other people’s public services. This is often called a “regressive” form of taxation. The word does not adequately capture the cruelty and crookedness of selling a lie to vulnerable people in order to bilk them. Offering the chance of one in a 100 million is the equivalent of a lie. Lotteries depend on the deceptive encouragement of mythical thinking and fantasies of escape.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
OK but to me it is a moral issue when gvmnt runs a gambling house and are subject to the same immoral ways to increase profit. YMMV
At least they are actually running this in the black, unlike the Mustang Ranch...
I pay $1 for a lottery ticket and can dream of what I’d do with $60,000,000. Seems to me I already got my monies worth.
Since I’m going to lose anyway, I never buy more than 1 ticket. I don’t even buy them every week. Since I don’t check if I won right away I can keep up the hope past the drawing.
I will admit that I’ve bought lottery tickets. It’s kind of nice to spend $10 and then sit back and wonder just exactly how I’m gonna spend that $300 million. ;-)
Sort of like going to see a movie.
Back in the 90”s, my neighbor won 13 Million on a $5
quick pick. That was when you had to spread in out over
20 years.
What?
I count the whole article as a bit of self-righteous preening.
If someone, even a poor someone, spends 5 bucks on the lotto, its not this guy's job to try and tell him he can't. The whole article reeks of the writer's contempt for people, really.
As for a payday loan, obviously it can be abused, but it is an option that people use from time to time. The people who offer the service do it voluntarily, and the people who use it likewise do so voluntarily. If you are in a temporary jam, its an option to get you through.
What the writer can't abide is people doing what they do without his permission.
I worked in a Pittsburgh area Stop N Go store many moons ago when I was in college. You could always tell when welfare checks were distributed - there would be a line at the door waiting for lottery tickets.
And the other half of the equation, what do they do with the lottery money? In many communities, they do things like build bicycle trails. Those are used by the upper middle class and lilly whites, not the poor. They enhance the real estate values of the upper class homes they are located near. So these lotteries are a tax on the poor to give luxury items to the rich.
Rent is due in ten days, and the car breaks down today.
Living paycheck to paycheck, there is often too much month at the end of the money.It all falls apart for the lack of $300.00, right now!
Whether you have no credit or bad credit, no bank is ever going to give you a small loan, short or long term, that allows you to plow anything into savings.Not worth their time, and also counterproductive. They would prefer that you bounce checks, and pay their fees.
A payday lender charges an upfront fee of 10% and $1.00, and will stretch that repayment out for three weeks.Problem solved.
So...rent gets paid on time, absent the $5 - $75 a day late fee.(yes-that is the legal lease penalty rate spread-read the fine print)
Car gets repaired, avoiding the loss of income due to missing hours.
No checking account or late “fees” that are even more punitive. No possibility of police/government “criminal” involvement.
A single “insufficient funds” checking account charge would be a minimum of $32.00.
So...using the payday lender saves $1.00 in banking fees, and allows you to not fall any deeper in debt.
Sue me if I waste the $1.00 on a lotto ticket!
It's a frickin bargain!
Whenever I bump into them buying those tickets in the store I challenge them to bet against my bet that the winner wont have bought his ticket from that store.
The odds are very low even for an individual store.
They will either go there, or go to Vito.
Like we’ve discussed, Economics classes should be mandatory.
“Payday loans are criminal usury and are illegal in several states (as they should be...”
Most people have no clue just HOW usurious payday loans really are. I checked out a couple a few years ago when I thought I was desperate for a short-term loan. The signs tout an interest rate that seemed high but reasonable considering their clientele. However, by law in that state, they were required to show the annual percentage rate. There was in very fine print: 552%! I decided I wasn’t really that needy.
There were a few people in the place doing “roll-overs”, just paying interest. The loan place is more than happy to allow this to go on forever, if possible. The borrower doesn’t have to cough up the principal, and just forks over what seems like a piddling sum comparatively. Eventually this becomes like an economic slavery to the lender. And some, the more trustworthy, are allowed to pay interest-only on more than one loan.
Payday loan places should be illegal, and usury should be prosecuted as the crime it is.
My boss once told me that. I replied that at 200 million to one the odds were infinitely better than getting rich working for him.
bfl
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