Problems with the Lottery
Maybe we could better see the odds if it was actual people – 300 million people – the population of CA, all trying to get through a door that will only admit 1.
Dave Ramsey: “the lottery is a tax on the poor and people who can’t do math.”
- It’s Gambling.
There’s no biblical prohibition against gambling specifically, but it goes against every biblical principle for stewarding our money. Gambling is addictive and destructive to people, families and communities. - It takes unfair advantage of the elderly and poor.
Some studies estimate that the poorest households — those bringing in less than $13,000 a year — spend an average of 9 percent of their income on lottery tickets. - Winners almost always end up losers.
What good is wealth if you have to hide from family and friends?
And, by the way, schools often do not benefit. In some states, school budgets are cut back by the amount that is generated by the lottery so there’s no net benefit. Some studies have shown that it’s the wealthiest school districts that get the most lottery money. So, it’s the reverse Robin Hood effect – taking money from the poor to give to the rich.
John Maxwell: Shame…remember the church
Article: I despise lotteries, but I bought four tickets
By PETULA DVORAK
http://santarosapressdemocrat.ca.newsmemory.com/publink.php?shareid=02753952c
The Powerball — all $1.5 billion of this week’s jackpot — is evil. Lotteries prey on the poor and the elderly. They’re rigged, hyped and glorified. The winners almost always end up as losers.
They are a regressive tax, a sneaky way to use human psychology to soak the less fortunate for billions — at least $70 billion in 2014, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.
The numbers underscore the dark side of this gambling sham that’s now legal in 43 states.
In many states, it’s the poorest counties bringing in the most lottery revenue. North Carolina Policy Watch found that counties where nearly a quarter of the population lived in poverty sold as much as $434 a person in lottery tickets.
Why? Maybe because most of the lotto machines are in the poorest neighborhoods, in the liquor and convenience stores and delis that are more prominent in low-income areas.
Some studies estimate that the poorest households — those bringing in less than $13,000 a year — spend an average of 9 percent of their income on lottery tickets.
But so much of the money goes to the state, lottery defenders argue.
All the good these lotto revenues are supposed to do for schools? Not so fast. It’s a “reverse Robin Hood effect,” concluded one study by two Florida professors. They looked at the scholarships funded by lotto cash in their state and found that the money harvested from Florida’s poorest residents went primarily to children from well-educated, high-income homes.
And get this — in 2009, 11 states got more tax revenue from the lottery than from corporations, according to the numbers from the Tax Foundation that tax writer extraordinaire DavidCay Johnston crunched. That means a whole lot of grannies playing scratchoff are the ones funding the government more, rather than the corporations raking in billions.
I know this firsthand, always having to make that last stop with my mom whenever we ran errands so that she could buy her quick-pick.
I’ve added up the dollars she has spent on her false hopes every week and confronted her about them.
“But someone’s going to win, so why not me?” she’ll say. It’s the ultimate level playing field, every $2 ticket has a chance, whether you’re rich or poor, waiter or doctor.
I know all of this. And when the win has been $100 million or $200 million and I’m assigned stories to talk to people in line for tickets about their dreams, or I have to go find the winner, I’ve had no desire to add to the pot and buy in.
Until this time. I held up the line at the ShopRite because I had no idea how to buy a ticket. And then I didn’t realize I had to pay cash.
The cashier was patient with me. I told her that I’d give her some money if I won. And for a few hours the rest of that day, I tucked into dreams I never dared to have.
Where would the vacation house be? What, exactly, would be my dream car? And the whole family debated what we would buy and where we would go and who we would help.
It was an alternate reality, warm and fuzzy, like the second glass of wine. A little loopy, like the buzz after a joint. Hopeful, frenetic and manic, high and then higher.
The letdown is coming. And then, for the lottery addicted, the whole cycle starts again.
Petula Dvorak is a columnist for the Washington Post.
