A recent study concluded “Feeling poor spurs lottery ticket” purchases
They found that people who were convinced they were earning a low salary bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets compared to others who were made to feel more affluent.
So, my question…
The Lottery (and gambling) has been touted as one of the more regressive forms of raising revenue/taxes there is. But how can we stop it? If the economy is doing as poorly as we read in the papers (which I’m not convinced of), then can/should we stop the “poor people” from spending what little money they do have on the Lottery. Also, since the Lottery is used so heavily to raise revenue for the State, do we want to reduce it?
It just seems to me this study supports what most people already knew, poor people gamble more than wealthier people at the Lottery. But should the State be encouraging this behavior. We seem to be becoming a society which continues to try to “protect us from ourselves” by banning trans fats, having seat belt laws, leveling outrageous taxes on cigarettes, drug usage laws… So why not drop the Lottery?
My personal preference is “caveat emptor” and let freedom ring! I think if anyone, rich or poor wants to spend their money on gambling then they should be no different than Charlie from Willie Wonka’s movie trying to win the golden ticket. But… I say this only with the notion that those same poor people won’t come looking to me for money for heat and/or food this winter when their tickets end up being losing tickets.
You can’t have it both ways, either you have the freedom and responsibility of your finances or the state takes over some of those financial responsibilities and takes away some of the freedoms. How we do this is beyond me but a start would be to reduce advertising the Lottery and stop over-populating poor areas with Lottery machines which make it so easy to buy tickets.
Thoughts?
I’ve read some of Lowenstein’s research before and it is interesting…
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p>Yes, I think the State should think twice about promoting the lottery. This research and others suggest that the lotto helps perpetuate a poverty trap.
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p>Government should be about guiding individuals to make good decisions for themselves.
i haven’t read the research article, so maybe this is addressed fairly there, but spending a few discretionary bucks here and there won’t necessarily widen the poverty gap. what widens the poverty gap are the larger policies of taxing, compensation and corporate profit mongering.
Evidently you have never waited in line at a convenience store while someone in front of you drops $500 on scratch tickets and then uses food stamps to buy milk.
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p>Your beloved Democrats love the lottery because it lets them spend money without raising taxes, but you should never ever pretend that the lottery is anything other than a significant transfer of wealth from places like Brockton to places like Carlisle.
have gambling problems. but you can’t deny that the wage disparity in this country is caused by something a little more comprehensive than the mass. lottery.
apparently by not saying explicitly “lottery is bad” i am assumed to be a lottery proponent. i just think it stretches credulity to say that the lottery is much of a factor in perpetuating the poverty gap.
ie those that feel relatively poor tend to spend more of their income on lotto tickets (which the author equates to burning money) , creating a downward spiral of lost income
this whole thread because i misread one word. sorry for my mistake and wasting peoples time. after re-reading your post, i agree that spending on lottery tickets probably does contribute to a downward spiral for some people on the brink.
Lottery = tax on people bad at math
I’ve bought a lot of milk at a lot of convenience stores and I have never seen anybody spend $500 on lottery tickets and then use food stamps to buy milk. Maybe it happens all the time in Central Mass.?
Milk and T-bone steaks, and then they drive off in their Cadillacs.
And I’ve seen a pretty large number of people come in with food stamps or WICs and then buy cartons of cigarettes or scratchies or literally get huge steaks along with their WIC milk.
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p>I don’t claim to know any of these people’s circumstances, but you can’t help but think someone is porking the system.
they’re picking up items for more than one person per trip, and not all of them are on food stamps. when i was in college, i rarely made a me-only trip to the store. why should it be any different for anyone else? oh right – they’re on public assistance so they must be shafting the system. it’s in the Republican Dictionary of Social Disease. look under “definitions of our favorite straw men”.
nobody would ever pork the system.
can never imagine a rational explanation besides porking the system.
besides porking the system, or that jim marzilli is a sick man, or that Barry Scott got got what he deserved.
That for you, the explanation always seems to be the nastiest, pettiest one.
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p>Buying a steak and using stamps for milk does not mean they’re cheating.
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p>It may speak to bad priorities, but hey, if I were on food stamps, the occasional steak would be mighty tempting, especially if the stamps allowed me to get the sundries I need.
and would get a steak or a pack of smokes or something, but it was more than obvious when some people were cheating the system.
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p>Here is the situation that would typically cause me to question their honesty. They come through, get groceries and use their food stamps. Fair enough. Then, they pull out a huge wad of cash and buy a carton of cigarettes or two.
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p>One particularly disturbing person was with her two kids who had no shoes on and she was getting Paul Mitchell shampoo in cash after getting food on EBT. I don’t buy it that she was just getting or for someone else either.
Nor is Paul Mitchell shampoo particularly expensive.
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p>Are you arguing that people on assistance should only be allowed to be generics? Or that having a wad of cash automatically means you’re gaming the system?
but your kids don’t have shoes? Pardon my language, but that sir (or ma’am) is bullshit.
But that’s besides the point. Unless it was winter (in which case you should have called DSS), kids not wearing shoes doesn’t mean they don’t have them.
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p>To me, what you’re describing is exactly why the food stamp program works. Even if we accept your explanation and believe the mother is unfit, she’s still using the stamps to provide food for her children. Which is the point.
He had an added rant about yuppie poor using food stamps at farmer’s markets, but I’m guessing he and CMD had the same source.
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p>Maybe it’s related to spinning the food bank shortages, maybe it’s related to the GOP “evil freeloading poor” meme. It’s still suspicious.
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p>As a sortof-counter. A friend who hit the lottery for 3.5 million a few years back still plays a ticket every day.
She had a big wad of 20s and dribbled them away, a little at a time, using any “winning” scratch tickets to buy more scratch tickets. It was very sad to watch.
Having just finished Pinker’s Stuff of Thought, I’m reminded of a number of ways in which humans are not wired to think in ways that reflect reality. Pinker’s chapter on the (Kantian) categories of time, space, and causation point out that a model of physics is built into language — and this model does not fit Newtonian mechanics. We naturally tend to think that moving objects are being impelled; we don’t naturally tend to think in terms of momentum.
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p>Probabilistic thinking is also unnatural. How many times does one have to explain that “boys are better on average in math than girls” absolutely does not mean “all boys are better in math than all girls”? That misunderstanding is again reflected in the language.
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p>Moving away from things I know have been established, I notice people easily confuse probability with possibility. The lottery is one of those things. It’s very easy to imagine that, because winning is possible, that it is halfway probable. It takes a certain amount of quantitative training — or maybe a personal aversion to risk or a stronger than typical ability to learn from experience — to see that to gamble in the lottery is to waste money.
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p>What I do take from this, though, is that the lottery appeals directly to our innate cognitive wiring. Learning that it is essentially a means of losing money takes something external.
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p>This is all a fancier way of saying that the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math.
reflects the basis of success of all gambling enterprises, no? A very sophisticated tapping-in to precisely those aspects of “our innate cognitive wiring” that make gambling seem like a financially reasonable thing to do.
I think self-deception can be deliberate, and even rational, in a sense.
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p>If I am barely scraping by, and see no means of bettering my circumstances, I can choose to accept sober reality and the near certainty that my life will never be anything but hard. OR for the price of a lottery ticket I can for awhile be someone whose financial circumstances are unlikely to improve — but who just might win the lottery tomorrow. And if I am good at deceiving myself, whose to say that my life isn’t happier (and therefore better) than someone who makes logical, statistically validated decisions that are grounded in their own economic self-interest?
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p>Anticipation is a reward in itself, sometimes more powerful than the object of desire. The presents under the tree have a splendor that vanishes when all of the toys are at hand. The dog trembles with excitement as the can of food is opened, not when the bowl is on the floor.
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p>[I do not say this to justify the lottery, btw; only to suggest that on some level people who worsen their financial lot by gambling may know exactly what they are doing.]
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p>As food for thought, below is a long relevant quote from Temple Grandin’s “Animals in Transition.” Although it rings true to me, one caveat is that she doesn’t provide references to the research she mentions. I’ve been meaning to search them out for verification, but haven’t done so yet.
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… the links I was referring to below. Ezra wasn’t referring to a paper but to reactions to Charles Karelis’ book The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can’t Help the Poor. There are three posts in particular that speak to the issue at hand.
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p>One here:
Also here:
And finally here:
There’s a well-known effect in decision theory that people are risk-adverse when it comes to gains but risk-seeking when it comes to losses.
I thought it was that people are so risk-averse possible losses that they would rather give up the opportunity of gains in order to avoid a loss.
This excerpt from Wikipedia matches what I have read about Kahneman’s and Tversky’s work on this:
Generally, the whole area of cognitive biases is a fertile field for those who want to think about how we are and are not rational by nature.
Which fields of employment attract the former and the latter? Any guesses?
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p>I was terribly unfair to Temple Grandin; she does a fine job of providing references (although none were directly noted in the above text). Hers was one of those books I enjoyed but didn’t finish due to being distracted away and failing to return; that’s my poor excuse for why I never noticed the notes at the end.
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p>Anyway, this is her primary reference for her discussion of engagement/seeking emotions in animals:
Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
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p>It looks very interesting, so I just now purchased it at Amazon.
It seems that there is a corollary with the onset of most behaviors that might lead to compulsion and addiction.
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p>The brain says, “Yes We Can”, the body and wallet follow and one hopes, “this time will be different”. Interesting how political junkies are duped by the same process.
… language containing pre-determined thought models is something I’ve seen touched on in college. I believe it was Benjamin Lee Whorf that proposed that language itself is evidence of a preexisting thought process, and that as such, it shapes the manner in which you think. Not just in terms of how you interact with the world, but even in abstract terms. He then went on and described how to do kinematics, complete with equations, in a language that didn’t conceive of time…. that is with no ‘t’ variable.
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p>It was a very interesting thought exercise at least. Wish I still had the paper.
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p>Aside from the interesting language issue, there is also (obviously) a lot of basic psychology to investigate here as well. In particular, I remember a lesson module on short vs. long term benefits and how we are wired in general to prefer the short term ones. Obvious examples like smoking and such come to mind… but the utility of not spending money is just the kind of long term gain that can work against our wiring… particularly so in the case of money because the abstraction is twofold – saving is an ‘abstract’ kind of long term benefit, and additionally, money itself is an abstraction of value in general.
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p>Also… I can’t find it now to link to… but many many months ago I remember reading an Ezra post talking about a recent paper on the classic economic model of self-interest as it applies to the extreme underclass. The paper made the point that from a comfortable stand-point, given the risk of wasting the purchase price of a lottery ticket, it made no rational sense to buy. But the relative utility of the money in question is also relative to the purchaser’s particular situation. In all cases, the utility of not buying the ticked is dependent on what that money could do for you as an alternative. In the case of the extreme underclass, the saved money isn’t likely to contribute to enhancing their underclass position (multiplied recently by the lack of class mobility that seems to be particularly bad in the US now) is extremely unlikely… so unlikely that it doesn’t seem like a waste of utility at all to buy the ticket on long odds… the odds are long for the money improving a life in the underclass either way.
It turns out recent test scores are in the news. Average math scores for boys and girls are close to equal.
I don’t know off hand what the exact odds of winning big on a scratch ticket are, but I do think they should be prominently posted wherever tickets are sold. What I do know is that I don’t make much substitute teaching and as such I have no business spending more than a couple of dollars every once in a while on a scratch ticket. I’d love to win a quick million as much as anyone, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that my “lost” dollar is contributing to municipal governments that need the cash.
So, if the study is correct that poor people are playing the lottery at higher rates than wealthier people, should we be making it easier for them and should we advertise and “push” it.
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p>Somebody told me that if a game in Vegas payed out like the lottery (both payoff $$ percentages and winning percentages) they would close the game.
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p>But what can we do? Should we protect them from themselves? And does the Lottery acknowledge that they are hurting people. Because like another posting earlier, I have seen people in Dorchester buying “shitloads” of tickets, not a simple $5 purchase. BTW, the simple $5 purchase totals $260/year which is a lot of gas, oil or electric bills. And that’s assuming $5/week which is probably low.
Cities and towns need the money. We should also make the odds very clear, not just in fine print that you have to go looking for. For me the bottom line is that this is entirely voluntary. I don’t know if there is a way to enforce this or not, but I would favor some method to prevent lottery purchases by those receiving government assistance such as welfare or food stamps.
 Warning: The Lottery is intentionally set up so that the Commonwealth earns money and you lose money.
…that should be obvious. Then again, so should the health hazards of cigarettes. I have consistently said that odds should be prominently posted at point of sale.
One of the books I read this year was Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. I don’t hunt for wild pigs or mushrooms and neither did Pollan before working on his book. His description of how one goes about finding mushrooms that grow under oak trees and hidden by leaves is fascinating. It’s like a glimpse into the the life for which evolution prepared us human beings, the life of a hunter-gatherer.
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p>To hunt for mushrooms, you try lots of different methods of finding them. You don’t fully understand why you find them when you do, but you learn to find them eventually. It feels like luck. Certain places, certain times of day seem luckier than others.
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p>I suspect that this innate sense of “luck”, born of trying to find animals to kill or difficult to find plants to gather, is wired into us. It potentially carries over into the many odd superstitions that surround luck. (This store sold the winning lottery ticket. It’s lucky!) What might have been a useful means of hunter-gathers trying out search algorithms in the forest may very well turn into modern, efficient ways to lose money at scratch tickets.
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p>When you speak of rationality, I think you’re talking about thinking in ways that are fundamentally unnatural*, that have to be learned and practiced, that require conscious discipline.
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p>Even with cigarettes. Isn’t it possible that social pressure rather than a rational calculation of probabilities has caused a decline in smoking?
…not only is it possible, but the unfortunate evidence is all around us. In general, I don’t understand why being rational is not “fundamentally natural” to borrow and reverse your words. Specifically with regards to cigarettes, it absolutely blows my mind that anyone that anyone of my generation (I’m 30) and younger would ever dream of taking up smoking. Did they really sleep through all those presentations we got in school demonstrating how absolutely horrible it is for you?! I must admit in what I thought was an Age of Reason, the irrationality of some people is downright scary.
… we could design our actions and mental calculations on rationality alone, the truth is that any rational framework we wish to design for getting along in this world needs to be reality based in that many of our better rational perceptions and decision making processes are associated with strong irrational instincts that must be ‘overcome’. Much of our instincts, when they turn into irrational action, are most often the result of a change in context. That is… the irrational instinct resulted in a net benefit in some past context, but then turns out to be maladaptive in modern context. The example I use most often is sugar. For the most part, all us humans have a sweet tooth. During the vast majority of our species’ existence this was a good thing in that it left us craving fruit. Add modern food production into the mix and our cravings now work against us.
There’s a persistent tendency in our culture to view the mind as they did in the eighteenth century — as a congress of faculties. Reason sits here, emotion there, and faith over there. We’re tempted to imagine that we all began as blank slates, infinitely malleable and perfectible. As Mr Lynne’s sweet tooth suggests, a brief contemplation about evolution renders the eighteenth century model implausible.
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p>The advancing science of mind undermines it further. Surprisingly, Reason isn’t quite so divorced from Emotion as we thought, we aren’t so free to take in any random sense datum, and we come “pre-installed” with a number of paradigms into which we attempt to fit our experiences.
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p>Given all that, it’s amazing that any of us delay gratification, act on calculations of risk, and willingly eat salad.
I’d be interested in what insight you or anyone else might have as to why some of us seem to be more rational than others. I for one definitely try to look at facts and evidence when making a decision. I wouldn’t discount emotion as we wouldn’t be human if it didn’t come into play. Earlier this month I read “What’s the Matter With Kansas” so this topic is closer to the front of my mind than it otherwise might be. In general political terms it does seem that Democrats better appeal to reason and Republicans to emotion. So at the risk of sounding arrogant there is a part of me that’s thinking I’ve figured out how to be rational so when will others catch up. Yes, 18th century Enlightenment is exactly where I am comfortable.
you think you’re rational, and i think i’m rational. yet you’ve given me many 4’s recently. if we’re both rational, this either means that rationality is a matter of perspective, or that sometimes people confuse personal rationality with strong personal convictions. and anyone not agreeing with those strong personal convictions is automatically and erroneously pegged irrational.
I believe the 4s were to indicate disagreement over philosophy rather than facts. You want to push harder and faster for everyone everywhere to support marriage equality, whereas I understand why we’re not quite there yet. I certainly believe that reasonable people can disagree as long as objective facts are not in dispute, which I do not believe they have been between you and me. What frustrates me is those whose stances defy all logic and evidence. I believe it was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once said that everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but everyone’s not entitled to their own facts.
It isn’t like smoking has only negative effects. It can be a social lubricant. The nicotine can be calming, or focus concentration. It might help you lose weight.
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p>I agree that these benefits do not justify the huge risk of dying a painful death from lung cancer. Others don’t.
…you added that last line, otherwise my response would be harsher. There are healthier ways to induce the “positive” effects.
by selling street drugs instead…after all, the original point of the lottery was to take over the numbers racket that had previously been the purview of organized crime. Maybe the Commonwealth should get into prostitution, too…or maybe they should find an honest way to raise the money.
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p>Seriously, though, it’s one thing to sell the tickets, knowing that those who want to play the numbers will always find a way to do it, and another thing entirely to actively promote gambling through advertising, thereby inculcating our young people (kids see the ads, too) that the way to a better life is through winning the lottery.
I thought the point I made above was precisely that common sense (= our cognitive wiring) was precisely the wrong thing to go by in making lottery ticket purchases.
My point is that such a state of affairs is most unfortunate. I consider myself pretty rational and very much wish that more people were likewise rational.
Who are the winners of the lottery, in aggregate? It’s not the taxpayers, since we’re buying all the tickets and taking all the winnings, and there’s more money spent on tickets than received in winnings [pre-tax].
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p>In fact, the big winners are the advertising companies. They’re the ones who the state pays for the billboards and radio advertisements, etc. Taxpayers are simply transferring wealth to media advertising companies. How is this good for the state as a whole?
This post certainly makes the libertarian in me scream out. In case anyone was wondering it was this line that really set me off:
“Poor people”? Perhaps you meant those living below the poverty line? Those on welfare? Or is it the working poor, people who work two jobs and can still not make ends meet? If I have an extra buck in my wallet the government has no damn business telling me how I can and cannot spend said dollar.
Our time would be better spent figuring out ways to elimate the poverty that grips too many of our fellow citizens than policing morality. And make no mistake, this post is all about morals. Just beacuse we think we may know how better to manage someone else's finances doesn't mean we should.
We don’t live in a libertarian society. Those who choose to blow their money and end up with nothing don’t just wander off into the wilderness. It’s not a zero-sum game.
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p>If a family can’t afford to feed/clothe/shelter itself, at some point government will likely pick up the slack. That means it’s your tax dollars and mine being used to care for the person who once had an extra buck in their pocket.
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p>Ideally, I wish we didn’t have a lottery. However, we do and since it provides boatloads of cash to cities and town, it ain’t going anywhere. So how do we minimize the negative effects of said lottery?
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p>There’s no moral way to restrict lottery purchases to only those who can afford it. As you say, people can spend their extra buck however they want. But there should be a way to, shall we say, encourage everyone (poor, rich, welfare, trust fund, etc) to make the smart decision and not gamble beyond their means. Maybe it’s prominently posting odds. Maybe it’s restricting advertising or capping the cost of individual scratch-off ($20 tickets?!?!?).
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p>But the point is that individual decisions don’t exist in a vacuum. I personally don’t care what people do with themselves when it doesn’t affect me/us. But enough “personal” decisions have broader implications than just on the individual making the decision.
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p>Since this is a state institution being discussed, it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about how the state can minimize the harm someone can do to themselves.
I don’t think prominently posting odds will help, although some sort of “ad campaign” showing how many people blow $500+ a year on lottery vs. how many come out $500+ ahead a year might be useful.
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p>I’d love to restrict advertisements. I hate that the Massachusetts government has designed a way to take money out of the Massachusetts system and hand it over to national and international companies, with absolutely zero net gain for society. I loathe Keno, and I too would like to see the highest priced tickets 86ed.
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p>Remove the scratch-offs and Keno from the system and get back to some delay between purchase and gratification and I suspect that sales would drop like a rock. Instead of those suggestions [which won’t happen any time soon], perhaps just restricting advertising and bigger/clearer/mo’ extreme “surgeon general’s warning” type messages would be a start.
I didn’t say we lived in a libertarian society, though sometimes I wish it were more so. I think I was inarticulate in my post; I took offense because not only the in the original post but also in several of the comments, the sentiment seemed to be that “we” know better than “them.” This is dangerous and arrogant. I also hate that the target is “poor people.” In reading the post, and in reading your selfish comment, I cannot help but think of the fact that no one is questioning whether we should be analyzing the spending of middle class homes. I think I recently read a statistic that the average family spends 110% of its income. Also, I cannot help but think of the myriad middle class families that are losing their homes because they took gambles on incredibly risky mortgages. (To be sure, mortgage companies were all too willing to set the traps.) I don’t blame them, I don’t think we should have national policy to ensure that every dollar spent by families is somehow first reviewed by committee. But make no mistake, even though I don’t have a mortgage I am paying for the mortgage crisis.
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p>We also seem to have no problem as the upper-middle class races itself to the financial bottom while they suffer a serious case of the “keeping up with the Joneses.” At the end of the day, it is usually the collective that feels the pain for the poor choices of the individual. However, this is largely the price of individual freedom. I don’t mind if we curb advertising, I don’t mind if we put a “surgeon general’s” warning in bold on each lotto ticket sold. Those remedies strike a balance between sound policy and promoting individual freedom. Unfortunately, most of what was implied was that us smart people better do what we can to protect the dumb poor people.
One thing that I always feel compelled to harp on, though. JohnD, if it really bothers you when the state comes asking you for money to buy food for the prodigal poor, just imagine how I feel when the Feds insist on taking my money to fund unnecessary wars. I’m not generally a betting man, but I’d wager that more of your income goes to killing people than to assisting supposed freeloaders.
I mean I read a long list of “outstanding” posts by people who obviously are very smart and put some thought into it… Until the “attack JohnD” crap started. I even read about some comments where the “people using food-stamps buying Loterry tickets” came up (NOT FROM ME) and those people got some push-back but no claims of Racism…
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p>I harp on many things and like most things in the world, it comes down to money. Money, ultimately drives most things in the world (just my opinion). I give a fair amount of money to charities and wish more people did the same. But 10 years ago I didn’t give a dime to them because I couldn’t afford it. Getting money changed things for me. Look at the whole Dem vs. Rep, Liberal vs. Conservative… it all about who will spend “your/my” money more wisely.
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p>Now when it comes to the Lottery, there have been many comments as to the why people do it. My personal feelings on it, I don’t give a flying shit about who gambles and how much they gamble, it’s one of our freedoms. I don’t know how much the State and the Federal budget is devoted to “assisting supposed freeloader” but I’m sure when you add it all up it is substantial. Nor do I know how much the military is spending on “killing people” vs. their normal budget. That is not what this post was about.
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p>I think the Lottery is doing a dis-service to the poor people of the State by advertising and making the “fix” of gambling so easy to quench.
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The State: Monopolies are bad, and illegal, and so is gambling so let’s have a state run lottery and significantly promote it.
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p>Makes perfect sense.
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This is what I hate, people using statistics for one thing and somehow making a point about something else. These arguments in particular annoy me. It’s also where you usually go with your posts.
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p>Aren’t food stamp and heating oil programs based upon income? So gambling that income basically has no impact on qualifying for these programs. Am I correct in stating this John?
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p>I would imagine that there are circumstances that someone would receive “emergency” aid for heating oil, so if you want to make your point then get some statistics concerning those who are put in a situation where heating oil is needed based upon gambling addiction to the state lottery. I don’t think that food stamps can purchase lottery tickets so I don’t know what you are talking about there. You are not connecting anything here.
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p>It you want to post about problems with the state lottery and “keno parlors” posing as convenience stores, then I’m with you in seeing what can be done to get rid of those.
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p>Ever heard of the word correlation? Some times there is one and some times there isn’t. But you take a chance and sometimes you “Discover the New World, Cure Cancer…” or you can sit on your thumbs and do nothing.
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p>Ya, ya, ya…
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p>Don’t know, I don’t use them. Besides, if someone is “below” the level of income to qualify(if they have any) then they can do anything they want with their money but should I continue supporting charities that will help them pay their say, oil bills. These”less than smart” people in need are competing with others who spend their assistance wisely. That’s not the way I want to help people, I’d rather help the ones who give a fuck about things.
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p>Like I said, you seem to be the expert on Gov Assistance here so I’ll go with you. I suppose the only effect will be the ones who qualify for these programs but will be on the 11:00 News in December saying they have to decide between heat or food because they can’t afford both because they have gambled their “assistance” away. Do I have your permission to tell those people to go call Hugo Rafael Chávez, not me?
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p>Ok, where is that data? Do they go out and ask the poor people “So, do you spend the money we give you wisely or do you buy Lottery tickets and booze (or steaks as someone else observed)? While they’re at it, why don’ they find out who’s selling drugs in the neighborhood? Sounds like easy data to find. Why don’t you go find the data supporting your idea instead.
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p>Sorry I couldn’t connect the dots for you. I guess I am wrong about this and the poor people who buy “excessive” amounts of lottery tickets cited in the study are not the same people who will be having problems this winter with heating bills. Thanks for the correction and keen insight.
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p>Thanks. But as I said earlier I am NOT against the Lottery or Keno parlors and for that matter any other gambling where people lose money. I think they are no dofferent than gamblling in the stock market. I just don’t want someone to buy Google stock but then ask me for money if the stock tanks.
Ask a very simple question that goes to the heart of the spew and you get “don’t know, don’t use them”.
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p>I don’t know, maybe take a gander and check it out before you post this stuff.
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But I do want to thank to people who have contributed to the conversation, minus the people who just lobbed bombs at the comments.
But you seemed mad.
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p>Yada something, don’t ask me, word correlation, Hugo Chavez, I’m the expert on government assistance…..
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p>It was obvious that you do not have an answer to my basic question. I’ll make the point more simply, you framed the post as low income people gamble more often in the state lottery. So don’t come looking to you for money when they spent all their money on lottery tickets.
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p>So I made the point that they either qualify for fuel or food assistance based upon income level. I don’t think you need to be an expert in government assistance to figure that out.
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p>The you went on to note, emphasis mine.
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p>When you say “State” we are not talking about giving to a charity, you are talking about government run programs. Again, those who qualify based upon income. So how does the lottery play into this? People either qualify or don’t no matter if they play the lottery.
We just differ on the “how”. Whether it is helping poor people or funding public emplyees and programs. These all have very good merit, but keeping the costs down and reducing/eliminating waste and greed should be a key goal.
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p>You made the point that they qualify for fuel or food assistance based upon income level. So how does the lottery play into this? and I tried to answer how I think it is relevant by responding in two sections…
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p>The assistance, the Loterry and about 50 other things figure into the income/assistance level of the poor. The straight answer to the “simple” question “does the Loterry figure into whether someone gets assistance? NO. But can you please point to an real life issue that gets answered in a simple black/white answer? Nothing is that simple.
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p>Sorry if I came across mad, but I was frustrated that you were not understanding my point that it could not be answered in a Yes/No manner. But thanks for replying and keeping the dialogue going.
These long lists of blockquotes followed by near vacuous responses (“Ya, ya”, “you seem to be the expert on Gov Assistance”) seem more designed to defend the D family honor than to advance any sort of discussion.
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p>You have an argument that goes something like
So far your response to this has been various forms of resentment. But what are you proposing? Are you proposing that poor buyers of lottery tickets freeze to death in January and that will teach them a lesson? Are you proposing we pay for 30,000 state employees to monitor the spending habits of the indigent? Are you saying that public assistance of any sort should be tied to a significant loss of autonomy, sort of like having a parole officer for being poor?
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p>Aside from just being resentful and reacting a lot, what do you propose? And could I ask you to think about this question for an hour rather than give a reactive, blockquote-infested response? You know, like counting to ten. Write something beautiful. Polish it. Think it through. Anticipate skeptical and intelligent questions.
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p>That way, your answer will be much more interesting and worthy of the D family name.
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p>You mean like someone on Medicaid who comes into money, say via a lottery win or an inheritance, who then is required to pay off the Medicaid lien?
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p>Something similar in context of the lottery doesn’t sound so draconian: requiring someone on public assistance to pay a percentage of the winnings, in addition to the income tax, back to the state.
otherwise, why restrict the income to lottery gambling?
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p>If you got kept after school on detention and then later made a killing on the beanie-baby trade, you should have to back-pay the extra custodian’s hours.
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p>If you ever had a small house fire at your home for which the FD assisted and then later sold off a Jackson Pollack you bought at a used furniture store, you should have to back-pay the fire department’s time and equipment wear and tear.
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p>If you spend more than one day a week at the local senior center and your grandchild dies just days after his Internet company’s IPO is worth gajillions, leaving you with a hefty windfall, you should probably have to chip in for those extra checkers games and senior painting classes.
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p>It’s all nonsense. How much you get from government services is not a function of how much you put in* via taxes. Paying more in taxes at one time in your life doesn’t entitle you to more social services at some other time. Likewise, receiving more social services at one time at your life doesn’t and shouldn’t require a larger tax bill at some other time.
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p>* there are a few exceptions of course, including Social Security and fees for service. But even SS isn’t directly and perfectly tied to income in a linear fashion; people who don’t pay in get some back, and of course contributions and receipts are capped.
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p>I suppose you think, the Medicaid model, where, if a person subsequent to Medicaid coverage, comes into money and must pay back Medicaid, is wrong?
The examples you brought up aren’t very relevant. Actually, they’re very irrelevant. Instead, consider real examples of conditional welfare.
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p>i.e. like the Medicaid laws. You will get coverage if you agree to the terms of the coverage, terms that require you to pay back Medicaid in some situtations.
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p>i.e. Green card applicants. If, in the course of their application, they receive government assistance, the sponsor pays the Government for the assistance the recipient received.
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p>i.e. State CCT: conditional cash transfers, where they receive assistance, but are required by law to adhere to certain conditions: such as getting vaccines for their children, or conditioned upon children attending school. Although, conditional welfare is terribly socialist and therefore (hopefully) probably doomed, it is quite the trend, IMHO.
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p>I don’t see the problem with a statute that requires a person, who can least afford to gamble, to pay back some of the State benefits he received, if he wins.
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p>I also don’t see said law passing. It would be a dissincentive for a welfare recipieent to play the lottery and the State can’t lose that lucrative poor, sucker market.
I don’t know the ins and outs of the Medicaid laws on repay (in some situations), so I can’t comment thoroughly. I can say that I suspect that I wouldn’t like the repay requirements, but again without knowing the details I can’t be sure.
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p>Green card applicants aren’t citizens of the USA, so it ain’t near enough relevant. I understand that “taxpayer” and “citizen” are certainly not defined to be the same, but I’m thinking about this far more in the way of “citizen” than “taxpayer”. I admit I haven’t been clear on this, and I may be cherrypicking here.
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p>State CCT is not repaying if you catch a windfall, it’s restricting how you can use/apply your assistance. This is no different than WIC or foodstamps, both of which are completely appropriate.
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p>The state already has this. It’s called income tax. We all receive benefits from government, and we all pay taxes. I see no reason to tax some more than others based on how much and how measurable their government benefits were, or how measurable they were, since so many of the benefits we receive from the government are so difficult to measure in the first place.
It takes more than reading books and using big words to be intelligent. If this was AOL I would put you on my “blocked” list so I could spare reading your condescending remarks… but I can’t.
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p>Your synopsis of my argument is very close. How common do you think that feeling is? No survey is required since I simply asked YOUR OPINION!
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p>As for your proposed proposals that you asked if I was proposing, you are wrong. Although I would have to think about your proposals, however absurd. But I would need more data, such as exactly “How many would freeze to death?” Would the 30,000 people hired be Civil servants or political appointees (BTW, I never asked for this data to be collected? Public assistance tied to loss of autonomy, now you are cooking. In the world of carrots and sticks, you seem like a carrot kind of person. Parole officers? Most already have them don’t they?
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p>BTW, between reading all the exciting books you read and learning all about cognitive proctology, when exactly did you lose your sense of humor or did it fall out of your ass when you ascended to Vesuvius with the rest of the Gods?
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p>If you take the time to read my first remarks, I said maybe the State Lottery should not be targeting people in the poorer areas to sell Lottery tickets to.
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p>I posted this question since I think there is a problem. I am not as smart as you KBusch so even thinking about it for an hour brought no enlightenment from the cognitive areas of my brain. I was hoping for some good dialogue and I am happy with 90% of it (minus the attacking bullshit response from you and a few others). I should realize by now that I cannot say anything critical of some sacred cow issues/groups without being attacked. Don’t you have any tolerance for opposing views? Do you think people have nothing to do in their lives so they can go research subjects, collecting reams of empirical data to back up thoughts they may have?
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p>I will not go to that level of research to support my questions and will remain at the level of this web site, which for the most part is “off-the-cuff” dialogue supported by fats where possible.
I have a bad sense of humor because I “attack” you for having strongly held opinions based on — well, on nothing in particular. (Example: “Parole officers? Most already have them don’t they?”) On another thread, if I point out that the evidence you offered was not very strong and was contradicted elsewhere, that’s just me making your life very miserable with an “attacking bullshit response” requiring “reams of evidence”. If I point out that you haven’t really thought through what you’re saying about African American voters because your arguments imply that they are more easily duped than whites, that’s just me “exercising the cognitive areas of my brain”.
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p>This discussion stuff must give you a terrible headache.
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p>For me, it’s a little like arguing with someone over religion. You want to have your prejudices. You don’t want challenges.
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p>That being so, why post on a Democratic blog? Do you only want pretend challenges? Do you only want to argue with the ill-informed? You told us you were here “to keep us honest”. Apparently that doesn’t cut both ways.
because when I read the phrase “defending the D family honor” I laughed out loud (literally) for about six seconds, which would have been a record for the month of July if I hadn’t had a chance to hang out with one of my high school buddies for a little while yesterday. Nothing personal, JohnD- I just found it hilarious.
Even Republicans laugh. And if 6 seconds is a record for you laughing in July, I think you need to relax more. Enjoy life, be happy… it doesn’t last forever.