The Lottery preys on the poorest

Lotteries: America's $70 Billion Shame

Excerpt:

The national average hides a lot of variance among the states. In North Dakota, per-capita lottery spending is a pittance at just $36 a year. In South Dakota, however, it’s an egregious $755 per head. Lotto games bring in the most money per person in the mid-Atlantic and northeast: number-one Rhode Island (nearly $800 per capita!), Massachusetts, and Delaware are among the top five states, while New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania join them in the top 13 (so does Washington, D.C.). ... it’s the poor who are really losing. The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most aggressively in poorer neighborhoods. ... In an age of rising income inequality, it’s pernicious that states rely on monetizing the desperate hope of its poorest residents. State lotteries take from the poor to spare the rich, all while marching under the banner of voluntary entertainment.

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Imagine a line of Pennies 2071 miles long

What Are Your Chances Of Winning Tonight's Enormous Powerball Jackpot?

Excerpt:

So what are your odds for winning tonight’s record $500 million Powerball jackpot? The Powerball website shows it to be about one in 175 million for matching all five numbers and the Powerball on a $2 ticket.

Comment: Don't quit your day job!

• The diameter of a Penny is ¾ inch
• The odds of winning the Powerball is 1 in 175,000,000
• Imagine a line of pennies edge to edge
• 175,000,000 pennies
• That's a line 2071 miles long!
• How far is 2071 miles
• Grand Rapids MN to Key West Florida is 2058 miles.
• That would be nearly 36 hours of non-stop driving! (you need to stop for gas and breaks!)
• Imagine that road lined with pennies in single file
• As you drive along you have one chance to stop and pick up a penny
• The winning penny has an "X" marked on the back of it
• That expresses the odds of winning the lottery!

Lottery luckless guy

Thousands Later, He Sees Lottery’s Cruelty Up Close

Excerpts:

Last year, he spent $30,000 on the lottery. ... For the last three years, he has utterly failed to recoup a rather staggering investment: $500 to $700 on the lottery a week.

....

Such a habit goes well beyond “social gambling,” said Jim Maney, executive director for the New York Council on Problem Gambling. John Charlson, a spokesman for the New York State Lottery, declined to discuss the specifics of Mr. Otero’s situation, but said that independent studies showed that the average New York lottery player spent about $350 a year and that other surveys showed that 75 percent of all New Yorkers have, at one time or another, put down money on the games.

Mr. Otero, 52, came to New York City from Puerto Rico nearly 30 years ago and worked as a mechanic in the Bronx. He has held his current job for about 10 years and supports his wife and two children on a yearly take-home pay of $40,000, he says, which does not include the free apartment, odd jobs or the typical Christmas tips.

But working is for poor uneducated men — a sucker’s game, he said, where one must run increasingly fast to keep one’s place in line. “You’re making money on the one side and spending it on the other,” he said. “If all you’re doing is working, you’re never going to win.”

So, for the last three years, Mr. Otero has been searching for an entry to the easy life — to win the lottery and move back home to Puerto Rico; to put his feet up with his family by his side.

He plays the game in shifts: one bet in the morning at 11 o’clock, another in the middle afternoon. His bets will range from $10 to $20 on a scratch-off game or on the daily numbers. He picks his digits, he explained, from the license plates of parked or passing cars.

....

In three years, Mr. Otero has won only three times: He earned $1,000 on a scratch-and-win last year and pulled in more than $2,000 on the Pick Five twice.

Comment: How's that phrase go? "The lottery is a tax on the stupid"!