"Lotteries: America's $70 billion shame"

doctorquant · May 12, 2015

The Big Ragu said: ↑

If you are going to define investing in equities as gambling because of the uncertain outcome, you'd also have to include lots of other things people typically don't consider gambling -- starting a business or investing in real estate, for example.
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And getting a copy of an old test and assuming the professor won't slightly change the problems (and therefore radically change the answers).

da man · May 12, 2015

Ace said: ↑

Wait! Doesn't gambling have to have some kind of hope of a payoff?
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I stand corrected.

93Devil · May 12, 2015

LongTimeListener said: ↑

There's no such thing as gambling losses. You can only write it down to zero. The only people who show up on that are people who A) have won money; B) did it in a traceable fashion (i.e. big score at a casino that has automatic reporting requirements; and C) have some reason to believe it would be a big problem for them if they did get caught.

In short, Devil's argument is crap, but that's nothing new.
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And as usual, LTL throws crap, follows up with nothing.

Google something for us, troll.

93Devil · May 12, 2015

The Big Ragu said: ↑

All that second graph demonstrates is that 100 percent of the people in this country do 100 percent of the gambling. At least the way you want to use it. It would only be meaningful the way you think it is if every one of those income brackets had the same exact number of people in them.

The reason that the highest percentage of gamblers (by a lot) are in that $50K to $70K bracket is that by far the highest percentage of Americans are in that income bracket. You'd have to normalize the brackets to make any conclusions from it the way that you want to.
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IRS: 235,413 million-dollar earners - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

People and households earning $1 million or more annually made up just 0.1 percent, or just over 235,000, of the 140 million tax returns filed in 2009, and just 8,274 returns were filed by people making $10 million or more.

So 16% of all people reporting gambling winnings on their tax forms come from .1 percent of our population.

Now I'm sure most guys who win $100 at the track are not telling H&R Block, but of the 235,000 Americans who make over $1.0 mil each year, what number of those are filing their gambling winnings?

Smallpotatoes · May 12, 2015

I just wish they'd stop tying up the lines at convenience stores when I'm trying to buy soda.

JayFarrar · May 12, 2015

As a social experiment I've been buying scratch off lottery tickets this year and tracking how much I spend and win.

So far, I've spent $24 on my state's lottery and won $11.

I find it hard to believe that the average is $236 per person. That means they spend roughly a dollar a day, five days a week.

I don't simply go to the story often enough to spend that much.

doctorquant · May 12, 2015

93Devil said: ↑

So 16% of all people reporting gambling winnings on their tax forms come from .1 percent of our population.
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Before you get slapped around for this and sulk off, I'd love to know how you arrived at that 16% figure.

The Big Ragu · May 12, 2015

93Devil said: ↑

IRS: 235,413 million-dollar earners - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

People and households earning $1 million or more annually made up just 0.1 percent, or just over 235,000, of the 140 million tax returns filed in 2009, and just 8,274 returns were filed by people making $10 million or more.

So 16% of all people reporting gambling winnings on their tax forms come from .1 percent of our population.

Now I'm sure most guys who win $100 at the track are not telling H&R Block, but of the 235,000 Americans who make over $1.0 mil each year, what number of those are filing their gambling winnings?
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You quoted my post and then. ... you didn't respond to what I posted. Typical. For the second time, that second graph was meaningless for the purpose you were trying to use it.

The goose chase you are on now still is 2 steps to the left of where you started, for what it's worth. If you win $100 at the track, you don't get a W2-G from the track. So yeah, most people don't report their gambling winnings when they have them because the track or casino where they won the money didn't report it to the IRS.

It's way more likely that someone with a lot of money is going to wager enough to trip the W2-G thresshold. Those people declared because their winnings were reported to the IRS whether they liked it or not.

That first graph, too, is meaningless for the purpose you want to use it, because it doesn't tell anyone anything about what percentage of gambling each of those income brackets accounts for. It tells you more about who won enough to trigger a casino reporting it to the IRS. If the motherload of people earning $10K a year or $20K a year are gambling a huge percentage their incomes away in the aggregate, it isn't going to show up in IRS data.

LongTimeListener · May 12, 2015

Poor folks are also more likely to gamble with entities that, let's just say, don't have a tax ID as a registered business.

93Devil · May 12, 2015

Thanks for pointing that out. I was looking at it wrong.

Someone who makes over $1,000,000 a year is twice as likely to report gambling winnings than someone who makes $50,000 a year.

I don't think then it's a terrible leap to say those with more money gamble more, or at least they gamble better - if there is such a thing.

93Devil · May 12, 2015

The Big Ragu said: ↑

You quoted my post and then. ... you didn't respond to what I posted. Typical. For the second time, that second graph was meaningless for the purpose you were trying to use it.

The goose chase you are on now still is 2 steps to the left of where you started, for what it's worth. If you win $100 at the track, you don't get a W2-G from the track. So yeah, most people don't report their gambling winnings when they have them because the track or casino where they won the money didn't report it to the IRS.

It's way more likely that someone with a lot of money is going to wager enough to trip the W2-G thresshold. Those people declared because their winnings were reported to the IRS whether they liked it or not.

That first graph, too, is meaningless for the purpose you want to use it, because it doesn't tell anyone anything about what percentage of gambling each of those income brackets accounts for. It tells you more about who won enough to trigger a casino reporting it to the IRS. If the motherload of people earning $10K a year or $20K a year are gambling a huge percentage their incomes away in the aggregate, it isn't going to show up in IRS data.
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What I was doing was actually posting some tangible research on this subject.

93Devil · May 12, 2015

Old data...

GAMBLING FACTS & STATS | Easy Money | FRONTLINE | PBS

But it shows people who visit Vegas spend more than a person buying a dollar scratcher everyday.

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"Lotteries: America's $70 billion shame"

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