"Lotteries: America's $70 billion shame"

No. But I don't think it's because they don't KNOW the odds are bad.

They likely believe --- accurately --- that given their lack of education, the lottery is their ONLY chance at hitting it big. So they take a chance.

It's simply misplaced cause and effect.

 

Where would society be without the compassion of libertarians?

 

What's the most you can even hope to win in a scratch-off?

 

I've seen scratch-offs that pay out $100 grand. There are probably ones that pay more, too.

 

One note...

I love to gamble. LOVE to gamble. But I also won't play anything with the expectation of winning unless I have an edge. Well, that and sports betting, which I am admittedly terrible at.

Yet lotteries are a ripoff and I admit I have an issue with how they are marketed. Same goes for casinos, stressing winners but never glamorizing the endless waves of people smoking their lives away on quarter slots as they gamble away their social security.

 

Beats me. At least $4 million, I guess.

Teen Wins $4 Million Lottery Prize From Scratch-Off Tickets She Received As A Birthday Gift

 

Behavioral economists have moved in in full force in my biz school. Recently, there was a push to try to get a greater proportion of students to fill out end-of-course evaluations. So, at the economists' suggestion they've put in place a lottery such that students in any course section in which the response rate is greater than 80% get entered into a lottery. ONE student will be drawn in that lottery, with the winning prize a free reserved parking space in the deck right across the street from the building. As our dean, a behavioral economist, said, "We all know how people are ... they over weight the outcome and they under weight the probability of that outcome. Might as well make that work for us!"

 

I have an aunt who is and always has been very bitter.

Growing up, while my dad and her husband (they worked together) were constantly being laid off and brought back at their job, she would talk about "winning the lottery" some day as a foregone conclusion. It was really sad.

None of her kids went to college, although one did join the Navy.

 

Yea, if the premise is that by eliminating the lottery, the lives of the poor are going to be greatly enriched and markedly different, I'm not buying.

The lottery in Georgia has been a boon to the state's higher education system. The free (or mostly free) tuition for going to state universities and colleges has raised the caliber of student going to those schools virtually across the board. It's especially noticeable at UGA, where it's often more difficult to get accepted there than Ga Tech, much different from the old days where UGA was the safety school choice.

And it has also kept more students in state who might have previously gone elsewhere. That's driven up enrollments, provided these schools with more revenues that allow for more growth and investment, especially critical to your smaller schools.

Overall, the collegiate institutions and the caliber of the student bodies are better now here, because of the lottery.

Of course, that's only going to be the case if the lottery funds are actually deployed to the educational system. I realize that's not the case everywhere. Believe my former state of residence of Illinois intended to do the same with their lottery proceedings, but doing what Illinois has historically done with money, the cost of a year at my alma mater there is essentially equivalent to an out of state year of tuition for anywhere down here in the south.

 

Poor people paying a tax to finance the educations of the rich and upper-middle class.

Sounds fair.

 

DW, that was a hanging slider, wasn't it?

 

Not as bitter as her nephew implying that I am a racist.