Poor people spend 9% of income on lottery tickets
 

It's a good thing they can't buy them with food stamps.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/05/...ets-heres-why/

It ain't the rich keeping these people down... :2 cents:

Watch all of the "every now and then" people rush out to buy a ticket when there's an occasional big payoff. They don't realise that since everyone else is doing the same (impulse buy because of the big jackpot), the effective average payout is actually lower than if they'd just bought during a normal week.

I'm confused. You mean playing the lottery, renting 24" spinners for my 94' chevy caprice, having cool cell phones, designer jeans and buying gold grills for my teeth isn't going to make me rich?

That just makes no sense.

I thought poor people were just "disadvantaged". I had no idea they actually make retarded choices and behaved irresponsibly.

Ah, you're right. Good to have a system when challenging 1:200,000,000 odds.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I am sure some of our liberal friends here will chime in soon and sort this all out for us.

It's becoming a sore point for me. Not the general stupidity of such methods of taxing the poorest people into homeless shelters to pay for state programs while they blame rich people for everything - i've actually always found that to be a little amusing.

What annoys me is that I can't get gas and walk in and buy a bottle of water because it feels like 10 idiots are always in front of me trying to buy lottery tickets and of course, no brilliant decision like that can be made quickly... so many pretty colors to choose from.

I do not understand.

Are you saying that 99% of GFY is playing the lotto religiously?

:helpme

Sure they can! The black market takes all kinds of payments.

I know a lot of those corner stores in the ghetto will cash out people's electronic benefit cards for them for a percentage. I'm not exactly sure how they work it since it's illegal, but say you get $500.00 a month for food on your card, you take it to the store and they'll give you, like, $400.00 cash on the spot and keep the other hundred.

The vast majority of the poor in the United States are poor because they have high time preferences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_preference) and low IQs.

What he said

Buying lotto tickets is my plan for funding my retirement. Plus while I'm there I can buy my daily 18 pack of Coors light. Gotta have a plan and stick with it.

.

the only way to make money using a lottery is by running your own lottery.

I heard the big lotto in the US is up to a $500 mill jackpot.

Will someone buy me a ticket?

I play the pick three all the time, I've actually won a couple grand on it over the years. I hit twice in one week one time for a total of $607.00.


I think there were three winning tickets sold yesterday. They're still waiting for the people to come forward. Of course at least one of them will be some 85 year old with one foot in the grave.

There is a reason they call lotteries a tax on stupidity.

any good lottery affiliate programs? :)

That was a physicist that said something like "i think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged"

The lottery is the Redneck Retirement Fund

Now just imagine if it ever occurred to them to actually save that 9%... Maybe some day they'd REALLY get out of the deep shit they're in.

Looking at study now...

How big was the study and the control groups. Not willing to PAY to see the answer.

source is 3 links deep.

Very interesting, I haven't heard about "Time preference" before. I've long thought about that general concept, but it's nice to know the name for it :) thanks

As I said in the week, Idiot Tax.

I have heard people call lottery tax a "Stupid People Tax"

If some spent 9% of their income I tend to agree with the statement lol

People can still dream.somebody has to win it

ooo, someone's been paying attention in their economics class. was this last week's chalk board lesson? would you care to elaborate with Laffer curves and indifference curves? let's meet for a beer and discuss the income effect and substitution effect.

do you prefer macro or micro? i'm more of a socioeconomic guy myself.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Good thing in Canada is whatever you win on the lotto is not taxed so that saying doesn't work here. Of course, if I would win I'd be paying taxes on everything that I bought, but I would not get taxed a penny on the actual winnings. A couple years back I was 1 # off from winning $12 000 000 on one of the lotteries in Canada. Won like $1909 by matching 6 of the 7 #'s. Had I won the $12 000 000 I would have gotten the full $12 million. I don't play the lottery very much though. Maybe 2 times per year IF that.

People are not stupid, they know the system is rigged against them, they get the worse jobs, the worse schools etc, the chances of escaping poverty are slim...social mobility is falling not increasing...

For a few dollars they buy a little hope, a chance, that they could be a winner....

"hope" won't improve their condition, the $645/year that they piss away could though, with that they could very easily take a few courses at a community college, learn some skills, and actually have some chance of escaping the poverty they are in...:2 cents:

You might want to read the thread again and then consider how silly your post is. :1orglaugh

Statistics would disagree with you.

The saying works just fine in Canada. It's not a "Lottery" tax. It's a "Stupid people tax". You're mixing up the two. You don't pay money on the lottery, but you're handing over the money to government for no good reason...hence a "Stupid people tax".

On that note, it's always humbling to visit these GFY threads. I continuously forget that I'm in the presence of such wealth, greatness and intelligence. If only the world knew that a great many of the "1%" posted on GFY, this place would be flooded, not with surfers looking for free porn, but with the poorest of the poor seeking to learn from you all.

Lotto is a great deal for the poor, $1 buys they some hope and dreams for a few days.:2 cents:

I've swen many examples of that. I suspect time preference has even more to do with it than IQ. My dad grew up in a tent worj a dirt floor, an extreme example of "disadvantaged". He worked sixty hours per week to go to college in order to have a better life years later. He kept working like yhat, eyes always on the future, after college and ended up flying around on corporate jets.

The investment of work my dad made put me in "privileged" class. I was more interested in having fun in the moment. I figured the future would take care of itself. I ended up living under a tarp myself.

It's a voluntary tax, I'm very grateful to those who choose to pay for the so-called "Good Causes"

If you are interested in reading some good stuff on time preference, I recommend the first chapter of Hans-Herman Hoppe's book on democracy. He talks about time preference and the process of civilization and decivilization.

Today I bought a raffle ticket for $20 that goes to support Bermuda dance organizations for youths. I look at it just as a donation.

645$ year is 53$ a month on tickets. Sounds too much when we sepak about average. Lots of them spend 0$, lots of them spend 2-4$ a month. To maintant 53$ month average lots and lots should spend 100+ a month.. Does not sound real.

That's why they are poor.

see avatar

Lotteries = How gov scams the poor

Its not the poor that created the lottery, its not poor writing the stories and stirring the media hype, and its not the poor who sell them the tickets. People get desperate when they don't have and the lottery takes full advantage of that.

I would venture to guess that many of the people who are spending an average $53 per month on lottery tickets spend a lot more than that on cigarettes and beer and in some cases weed.

Everyone I have ever known who lived on the system smoked, drank at least a six pack a week, had cable with multiple channels and often smoked weed on a regular basis.

It isn't just bad money decisions holding these people back, but there is a certain segment of the population that just feels like they shouldn't have to work and that by raising their kid or just not going to jail they are contributing to society. Saving these people a few dollars per month won't help them, they need a 180 degree change in attitude first and that likely isn't going to happen.

its directly related to intelligence

you cant expect stupid poor people to make the best life and financial decisions. it just isnt logical.

you want the dumbest people who have the lowest paying jobs to perform as well as everyone else in society



the rich get richer. the poor get the picture. the bombs never hit you when you're down so low.

Lottery
 

Sad truth in life, hard work and education will not always give you the "American Dream." For the middle class or the "lower class" the only hope is the lottery. The lower class never had anything. The middle class saw their pensions striped by a guy named Romney or thieves like him.
Gone are the days for working for a BIG company for benefits and a pension. NOT EVERYONE CAN BE CEO AT SOME FORTUNE 500 AND GET A GOLDEN PARACHUTE.
"Free" health in the US would lower the cost of US cars by thousands over Asian countries. It costs G.M. almost $3000 per car just on health care.
Then why do people with college degrees work at Walmart?? We're becoming the soviet Union of the 80's.

The biggest risk in life, is not taking a risk.

Robbery
 

So while BankAmerica, CitiBank, Wells Fargo rob us Trillions, YES trillions you worry about someone scamming a few dollars in food stamps.
Reminds me of the guys I knew in a bar bitching about welfare but smoking cigars & drinking large and bragging about they were getting the US Govt to pay for a condo conversion, in an area that the only people who would live there, couldn't afford to be in their places.

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup