"Lotteries: America's $70 billion shame"

I hadn't considered the, "Poor people are happy this way" angle.

Wonder if America ever tried to justify any other institutions in that way in the past ...

 

Well that certainly settles it then.

 

Absolute racket. It's like monopoly money. POTUS spent 2012 campaign talking about lowering student loan interest rate but nothing about the cost of tuition.

We are doing everything we can to keep ours from any loans for college. If that means we'll work til 71 or 72 instead of 65, I'm game.

Student loans are a financial cancer for young people.

 

Which is exactly why the government should not be selling this idea to its poorest citizens.

More prevalent perhaps -- though I'd want someone to show that to me -- but it's not a larger percentage of income/wealth. That's the problem.

Who cares if Michale Jordan or Bill Bennet blows a bunch of money on gambling? They can afford to.

And, even casino gambling was inconvenient, and expensive when it was limited to Vegas (and Atlantic City). Now every retiree, and person on disability can hop a bus to their local casino the day they receive their government assistance check.

 

But they are the only way that some people can go to school, particularly lower middle-class people who want to go to graduate school. (Like me.)

Some of the pay-according-to-income plans are quite helpful. It is unlikely that I'll ever pay back all of my student loans.

 

The three or four times in my life I've been to "the boats," they were not packed with wealthy people. Nor the OTB.

 

Ever walk through some of the shitty local casinos -- especially midweek, during the day?

Most depressing places ever.

I went into the one in Rosemont last year at luchtime, thinking I'd check out the lunch buffet. The place was pathetic. poor, old people, about half of them attached to oxygen tanks.

They sell casino gambling as fun, and sexy.

It's a vacuum, and it's aimed at the pockets of poor people.

 

Oh! I installed an espresso machine on one of the "Boats" in Gary. Made the Rosemont casino seem glamorous.

 

New York's OTB is famous for being the only book making operation anywhere to consistently lose money. But, its full of great patronage jobs.

 

My wife won $500 once on a card she bought on a lark.

 

Even with our sparring today, I agree here.

My issue is with this climate that colleges can charge whatever the hell they want and people can just finance it. It's more complex than "back in my day". I took a year off at 18, got in state tuition ($2700 a year was the most I paid - crazy, right?), worked full time and graduated without debt.

Those days are gone, sadly.

We are fortunate in that ours kids seem perfectly fine with going to State U and not running up a 45k a year tab elsewhere.

(A buddy of mine is getting divorced AND paying for a kid at Georgetown. 43 a year for wife. 61 a year for Georgetown. He should buy some lottery tickets).

 

Old people, too.

My mother-in-law and her sister are like fiends whenever they are in the area.

Then they come back home talking about how great they are at slot machines. How they can tell which machine to go to, and when to pull.

It's cute for them, I guess. But people think this way. People without pensions.