Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

A huge irritant to me is to watch people who could be spending their money to better educate their children spend it instead on stupid crap like lottery tickets.  Most of us have fallen on hard times at one time or another.  But, getting poor is no excuse for losing your mind.  Let’s put it in perspective.  Say, just for kicks, that you spend 2 dollars on a ticket every week because, heck, it’s fun.  That’s 104 dollars a year.  What can you do with 100 dollars?  You have a number of things to chose from: buy your kid a guitar, take him to a museum 4 times, buy a dozen Magic Tree House books, pay for a month of gymnastics classes, buy the whole Hooked on Phonics program, eat out with the family 3 or 4 times, etc… .  There are a lot of highly beneficial things you can do with 100 dollars, all of which have a higher return value than a dumb lottery ticket.  Gambling in Vegas is not economically smart, but it is fun; I can see that.  How is scratching a ticket fun?  That’s just stupid.  Vegas is stupid, too, but at least it comes with flashy lights and half naked girls.

 When you don’t have much money the little that is available should be spent wisely.  The lottery is not a wise use of those resources.  As of 2009 only 8 states did not have lotteries,  Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.  The other 42 states justify lotteries by saying they pay for essential services for everybody.  These 42 states say that gambling is a net gain for everybody.  What they don’t say is that the poorest people spend disproportionately compared to other income groups (Bad Bet by Timothy O’Brien, 1998).  Poor people, who by definition have few resources to buy food and basic necessities, are spending their money on purchases of long shot odds.  In fact, people in the lowest income bracket spend the most on lottery tickets (Clotfelter and Cook, Business Week, 1989) both actually and relatively.  States, knowing the right buttons to push, prey on the gambler’s fallacy, the illogical belief that you are destined by fate to either win or lose.  Unfortunately it’s the poorest people who are the most ignorant and the most likely to fall for it, and state governments know it.

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If you don’t believe that the state lotteries know perfectly well who they are targeting, just take a look at this video from the Washington State Lottery.  The tag-line is Every Bird Should get to Fly, a reference to poor people who simply have not been blessed with wings (money).  You, poor people, should get to fly, too!  The odds, by the way, of matching 4 numbers (and winning $10,000) is 1:10,626.0.  How’s that sound?  Oh, and you have to spend two dollars on every play.  Hmmmm.  Do the math.  I will also add: you are not predestined for anything.  You are not a chicken.  Don’t let the state tell you you’re not going to make it on your own.

Here’s one from the NY lottery that uses that nefarious gambler’s fallacy to persuade people to play.  I guess there’s no law against lying in commercials.  The chances of winning a free play, by the way, are 1:11.  The chances of winning $5,000 on a $1 play is 1:115,151.  Good Luck!

The Illinois lottery would like you to believe that Bernie Mac got rich by playing the lottery, not by having an abundance of talent.

The Nonsensical and Cyclical Government Argument for Lotteries

The state wants you to believe in the redistribution of wealth, that you’re getting a service, that someone else paid for, that you couldn’t have gotten otherwise. The truth though is that the poor are funding ill-managed government programs that could easily be directly funded through private charity, corporations or, gasp!, you.  Why would rich people play the lottery?  No, the lottery is not about socialism; it’s a money grab where rich and morally bankrupt politicians scoop what they can; and, if there’s enough left over, they’ll send some back to the poor guy, who donated it in the first place. The $104 you could have had in your pocket to spend on your kid’s education in any way you saw fit instead got processed down to pennies.  It first went into state coffers, then it got used to pay the bloated salaries of useless government workers.  After bribes and pork what’s left over might get used to educate the very kids whose parents spent it stupidly in the first place (but even that is a stretch because the teacher’s unions need their pound of flesh, too).  It’s a giant waste that is intended solely to keep the government getting bigger and you getting smaller. They don’t want you to know that.  Lottery money, your money, goes to support the government, actual government union workers, not you and your family.  Keep your money, put it to good use, and stop funding an ever-expanding, ever greedy government.

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