John Oliver takes on state lotteries. Short version: they’re a disgraceful scam.
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John Oliver takes on state lotteries. Short version: they’re a disgraceful scam.
I caught this, “live”, about halfway through. I always derided lotteries as “the st##idity TAX”, but geeze, Oliver’s expose was wrenching. That they would reduce spending on education “cause the lottery revenue is coming in (*wink*wink*)”, and the promised “lottery for education” ends up reducing the education budget, is just …
The bit about the google popup ads just requires some computer nerdity to understand how ads FOR the lottery popup when looking for gambling intervention.
The effect of lottery existence on actual state budgets was horrific. I always mistrusted politicians to spend wisely but this lottery scamming seems too deliberate.
and I always thought “lottery for education” was a contradiction in terms, self-defeating program.
.
but I’m just a privileged wise ass
At least in Canada you get the whole thing in a lump sum tax-free.
I grew up outside St. Louis, and while I was in high school they started allowing “riverboat” gambling. (They’re stable structures; the companies built moats around the buildings so they can say they’re “in” the river.) It passed because they promised all this money to education – and then all of a sudden, we just didn’t have money for anything anymore. The casinos make an incredible profit, but somehow that money never makes it to the schools…
Lotteries in Canada use a very simple marketing message that’s highly effective:
“You can’t win if you don’t play.”
So people buy tickets to move their chances of winning from zero to barely above zero.
@1 The moment I hated the lottery and didn’t just not play it and view it as a stupidity tax was watching a homeless man in Berkeley buy 20 scratchers. It’s not a stupidity tax, it’s a desperation tax.
They should change the marketing motto : “You to could be part of the 1%” (if you’re extremely lucky)
I have a friend who rearranged his work schedule for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is so he can go to Friday matinees to see the new movies before anyone else. He has pretty much literally seen every wide-release movie made since the early nineties. No one calls him addicted, they call him plugged into the culture. Yet if he had spent all that movie ticket money on lottery tickets instead someone would probably be arranging an intervention for him, even though there’s a fair chance he might actually have more money than he does now.
Also, my understanding is that the average cable TV bill is around $100/month. I play the lottery once in a while, but neither I nor anyone I know spends anything close to $1200/year on it. So, it kind of seems like Oliver is dumping on gambling just because he thinks it is sinful or something, not because it is actually any worse for poor peoples’ finances than other forms of entertainment.
Oliver’s point that governments shouldn’t be promoting gambling is a fair one, but in California the lottery was approved by a voter proposition with a pretty high percentage of ‘yes’ votes. Also, I think they stopped using schoolchildren as the enticement in lottery ads here. I don’t believe I’ve seen one like that in well over a decade.
Brilliant! Make the poor enthusiastic about giving their money so that taxes on people who don’t need the money can be reduced. Sounds like a conservative’s wettest dream of the year.
Here in california, our lottery requires the big winner to pick 6 numbers from 55. Simple math says the probability of winning is 55!/(6! * 49!). This is 1 out of 32,468,436 or 0.0000031%. Even Las Vegas odds aren’t as onerous.
When someone says that you can’t win if you don’t play, my comment back is that is true, but it won’t be you winning.
Lotteries are the most cynical tax ever affecting the poor and ignorant.
If that meant being able to watch a random slice of TV for ten minutes once a week (most statewide lottery drawings happen once or twice a week, AFAIK) then it might be a more valid comparison. Sure, that might be addictive, and once in a while the ten minutes might even include something really good. It still wouldn’t be anything but a scam in the aggregate.
@8 “there’s a fair chance he might actually have more money than he does now”
The chance of winning were given as 176 Million to one in the example. Spending the weekly movie money on weekly lottery tickets means a chance of winning of 176 Million to one. Each week. It doesn’t accumulate.
A “fair chance”, yeah I could see that if he’d been playing for 3.5 Million years. He might also have spent 90 Million dollars and won about a box of donuts worth of money in that time.
“You’re helping support the 1%” would be more accurate.
I have friends who drink the occasional glass of beer or wine on weekends and have no problems with it in their lives. Doesn’t mean that alcoholism doesn’t exist. I used to work at a casino- it was a real eye opener. It’s not really supported by the people who go there and blow a few hundred bucks worth of disposable income a couple times a year. It’s funded by the people who rush in as soon as they receive their paychecks and the people who spend all day burning through their Social Security payments. It’s making money off the people who are so addicted that they’ll refuse to get up from their chair at the slot machine long enough to use the bathroom: they’ll soil themselves rather than risk losing the big payoff that they know their lucky machine is just about to provide.
I once did a radio piece on the lottery in NY and calculated that relative chances of winning against being killed or injured in a road accident. I can’t remember the actual figures, but my conclusion was something like ‘you’d better not drive more than a quarter of a mile to get a ticket’…
Felix @#12
There are more prizes than just the big jackpot.
However, since yours seems to be a rather brittle kind of thinking, let me hasten to assure you that I do not think he would have received more money than he spent on lottery tickets.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bring back the 18th Amendment. And because there are people with Celiac disease, we should make bread illegal, too.
@ moarscienceplz
Was there a sale on straw where you live today?
@moarscienceplz #15 “There are more prizes than just the big jackpot”
That’s true, hence my mention of the slight chance of becoming the proud owner of fresh donuts, by net wins over losses before playing for a significant time.
It sounds like your friend has a stable job and, rather than blow off work to watch the matinees, has been able to arrange a schedule which allows him to participate in his hobby while maintaining his job and getting the bills paid. This is in no way comparable to a person who goes out to buy groceries and comes home without groceries, having spent the money on video poker lottery instead (per the video).
The simple concern over addiction is for people who display addictive behavior related to gambling. The greater concern is that the lottery is a stealth tax which primarily costs poor people, bolstered by aggressive and misleading advertising.
The only positive thing I can say about state-run lotteries is that I’d rather the government receive numbers money than organized crime, as at least this way there’s a chance the money will go to help somebody.
OK everybody, look. I’m not saying there are not people who are seriously harmed by gambling, or alcohol, or marijuana. Of course there are. What I’m saying is that people need to be educated to understand these risks in themselves and others and they need to be able to avoid these things that can harm them, rather than take them away from everybody.
I’m all in favor of taxing things like this and using some of the tax money to help addicted people. I am NOT in favor of demonizing everything that has the potential to harm a small fraction of the population.
Must have been a damn good sale.
The problem isn’t that casinos or state lotteries hurt a small percentage of the population, it’s that they actively prey on that portion of the population.
Here’s a cite: http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_3_gambling.html
My high school music teacher used to say that “Lotteries are taxes on people who don’t understand math”. As an adult, I think it’s a bit more complex. Sure, some of it is for people who don’t understand just how unlikely it is that they’ll win. But some of it is also desperation. The people who are dreaming that ticket is going to net them millions of dollars and get them out of being poor. Which is somewhat ironic because part of the problem is that society is stacking the deck against the lower class, and poor people would do better if the lottery was dismantled completely.
I originally thought “Last Week Tonight” would be a ripoff of “The Daily Show” with more swears and less commercials. I’m very impressed with just how much John Oliver has done to bring certain injustices to light.
Lotteries are like changing from income taxes to sales taxes. They’re yet another way to move the tax burden off of the rich and on to the poor.
Arguing over whether gambling is bad misses the essential point.
Lotteries are a poverty tax.
We have a lottery syndicate in our office. they once tried to peer-pressure me into joining.
“Ok,” I told them, “My numbers are 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.”
“But those will never come up!”
“Now you see why I don’t play.”
I didn’t pick 1-6 because they’re apparently the most commonly picked lottery numbers – clearly there are a lot of people out there who understand probability but still play.
I liked that John Oliver pointed out that state income that was supposed to go to education remained flat in many states for years. The lottery income did not increase funds for education, instead, it was used as an excuse to give more tax breaks to corporations.
That’s what happened in North Carolina, Idaho, and 19 other states.
The lottery is a scam. It takes from the lower income brackets to give to upper income brackets.
And, no, I don’t think buying a lottery ticket is much fun. I know a few older people who have relatives or friends that stop by to drive the older person to a place where they buy a lottery ticket. This becomes a social event that is beneficial for the older person — but, really, I can think of other reasons for a visit and a drive that would be equally beneficial without supporting a scam.
This shouldn’t be that controversial or hard to grasp, moarsciencepleez:
The government should not be in the business of fleecing poor people through gambling schemes. The government should not use lotteries as an excuse to not fully fund the state education budget from tax dollars, which they do. In Vermont it’s shameless. They hand out four-color signs to the corner stores that say, “We contributed $5,000 to educate Vermont’s children last year!” complete with cartoon balloons, pencils, and paper pads.
People are allowed to make their own choices. Yes. They are. They get to spend their money on gambling, or booze, or cigarettes, or cigars, or whatever they want.
But the government should not be knowingly taking advantage of the poorest—and they know full well that the poor are rich targets for lottery spending—people. The government should have some sense of moral shame.
Do you understand the difference?
An obvious comparison to gambling here is drug abuse (including alcohol). Lottery players know full well that the odds are against them, though comprehending just how against them they are is more difficult. Plenty of the people involved know full well that the long term effects are just going to be more damage. Still, the hope that winning could happen provides a short term reprieve, and the surrounding situations can easily be bad enough to make that an entirely understandable chance.
Lotteries are a state sponsored method of harvesting money from the desperate, generally paired with tax breaks towards those who actually have substantial means. They’re perpetuated in large part by the failure of these same states to provide anything even vaguely resembling an acceptable social safety net.
I’m not saying that gambling should be banned. What I am perfectly willing to say is that the state governments should damn well be better than to engage in it directly, and the way lotteries in particular work and interact with other taxation and social systems is a disgrace. Sure, prohibition might be a bit much – much as it arguably is for some drugs. Yet you don’t see state opium dens.
FYI: along with “Last Night Tonight,” John Oliver also does a weekly audio podcast with fellow comedian Andy Saltzman, and it’s excellent. They took a hiatus over the summer while Oliver was getting his TV show up and running, but now they’re back. I highly recommend it.
Oh, it’s called “The Bugle,” this podcast. Sorry, I forgot to mention that.
Oh for Pete’s sake. The government isn’t some sort of Uber-mind. It has no shame and can have no shame. In a democracy it (hopefully) does what the people want it to do. In California the people have clearly said they want it to provide a lottery. Yes, there are instances where the will of the people is obviously wrong and needlessly harmful and needs to be overridden by the courts, such as the ban on same-sex marriage, but I don’t see this as one of those times. In this case, each person should be given a clear understanding of how the lottery works and then they should be free to make up their own minds about playing or not, and frankly it seems a bit elitist to say they should not be given that choice.
And BTW, those of you who want the government to get out of the gambling business are free to introduce a proposition to privatize the lottery. I bet you will lose big, but go ahead and try.
@25 voidhawk:
If you didn’t recognize that other people were likely to play them too, 1-6 might look like the best option. You’d pay the same cost, get the same monetary reward, but also have the added publicity of being the person who won with the numbers nobody realized could.
But then again, maybe you’d have the added hassle of being the person investigated for winning with the numbers nobody realized could, or who was denied their winnings because nobody believed it. So maybe there’s some subtlety in picking the best numbers after all…except that obviously the winning move is the one from War Games.
…exactly what I saw growing up in CA after the anti-tax folks managed to pass proposition 13, cut off revenues from property taxes, and the state in desperation going for the lotto.
CA in the following 30 years dropped from top five in the nation for primary education to somewhere in the high 30s.
yeah, we’ve been screwed for an entire generation, and the few who noticed couldn’t really do much to change it in the face of greed and stupidity.
you fucking moron. can’t you see that this is exactly WHY people vote for a lottery to begin with? because they DON’T get a clear understanding of how it works, and the people who make money off this shit, in collusion with the people who make money off of not having to pay their rightful share of taxes, want it exactly that way.
this is EXACTLY why in the post just above, I posted CA as a great example of why this went wrong.
you really believe government works for the best interests of the majority of people any more?
you’re delusional.
…there IS no well educated populace to maintain a democracy in pretty much 90% of current democracies that exist at this point.
maybe all of them.
It’s not about the government being some sort of uber-mind, it’s about the fundamental difference between enacting an actual prohibition and not enacting a government program. Prohibitions tend to create black markets, provide operating space for organized crime, and generally cause actual harm. A flat gambling ban will predictably create all sorts of dubious underground organizations, with all that entails. Not running a lottery will do approximately none of that.
Really, this is just an instance of broader criminalization (or absence of criminalization) of economic activity. The harm of the black market, criminal organizations, restrictions to freedom, etc. cause is weighed against the harm of free proliferation. Gambling happens to be a case where criminalization is likely the more damaging of the two. The same weighing happens with weapons, where large classes are banned from private use*. The more sensible parts of the prostitution debate look at the same general principles. The same applies to drugs.
In all of these cases, not having a state level distribution system does not have these effects. There’s a reason that the people who generally want to allow prostitution don’t tend to support government brothels. There’s a reason that the people who want drugs decriminalized generally don’t want state sponsored opium dens. It’s generally not just hostility towards everything governmental.
*I’m referring more to military vehicles, missiles, chemical warfare agents, etc. than firearms. Black markets exist for some of these, and that’s generally less harmful than just letting people legally produce and distribute the weapons in question.
in Germany some folks proposed that benefit/welfare recipients should be barred from playing the lottery or any other form of gambling. the proponents didn’t really have the financial health of the players in mind – their idea was that once the poor lose the rest of their rent and food money, they’re going to come begging and getting more funds from the government that just won’t let them starve to death goddamn socialist German constitution. which of course would cost the honest working man MEEEEEELIONS and make life unbearable for everyone.
brilliantly, the idea was to mandate that lottery ticket sellers make themselves aware who is and who isn’t a poor person and deny them accordingly, as they would ask possible minors for ID when selling alcohol.
thankfully, the ticket sellers weren’t exactly happy with the added workload of asking lottery customers or sports betters to prove good financial standing all the time, and some of those pesky civil rights types had funny ideas about human dignity versus revealing your finances to strangers in a public setting.
For goodness’ sake, moarscience. I don’t understand why you’re defending your position this way—you’re tying yourself up in knots. For what? The government “is not an uber mind.” Um, duh. It does have responsibilities, however, and one of them is not to fleece the poorest people through a gambling scheme. This isn’t some outrageous, fringe idea; that government has a duty to make choices with ethics in mind. It’s as if you’re disputing the idea that some decisions by government ought not to be criticized because “the people.”
No one here is arguing for a ban on gambling. No one. Do you think that is what is at stake? Because I cannot understand why you would argue this way if you weren’t fearful of some specter hiding in the background. Because objecting to government-sponsored gambling that exploits the poor is not some wacko, beyond-the-pale thing. It’s very ordinary. Why do you seem so exercised over it?
No. You don’t get to be this dishonest and get a pass on it.
Acknowledge that no one proposed denying people a choice to gamble. No one. No one even hinted at it.
*Please* argue honestly, even if you disagree. It’s not much to ask.
I’m with sugarfrosted, this isn’t about people who don’t understand the odds. It’s about people who are so desperate that they feel the million-to-one odds of getting rich are still better than the odds of them working their way out of their current financial situation. The sad part is that they’re right. Once you dip below a certain point it’s next to impossible to climb back out. The USA dream of working hard to get rich had always been a dream. Luck and privilege had always been the biggest factors in a person’s success (or lack thereof). No one intended to be poor, for most it’s just how life turned out through no fault of their own. The lotto offers a chance out of their situation even if they know it’s remote.
No, you’re just arguing for a ban on state-run lotteries. CA proposition 37 passed with 58% of the vote, and I haven’t seen any evidence of a major move to repeal the lottery. So, the people like it. That’s point 1. If you privatize it, instead of some fraction of the revenues going into education, they go into Sheldon Adelson’s pocket (or someone like him). Even if the lottery only generated $1/yr, I’d rather it went to the schools then to Adelson. That’s point 2. Oliver’s point of the fungibility of tax revenues applies to ALL revenues, so that isn’t really an argument against lotteries. It is up to the people to force the government to spend money where the people want it spent, period.
Further, if private corporations get control of the lottery (or if you shut down the lottery and let Indian casinos and card clubs have all the gambling business in the state, do you think there will be less coercive advertising? Or fewer gambling addicts? I sure don’t.
The odds against winning the lottery are enormous, but the odds rise from approximately 0.0000000% to approximately 0.0000031% if you buy a ticket. So the odds of winning are infinitely greater when you buy a ticket than when you don’t.
Yes, absolutely.
Only in your delusional imagination. But the lottery is a very poor way of taxing for education, and it hits lower income people the hardest instead of the higher income people compared to other taxes.
Running a state lottery for a recurring expense (like education) is a terrible, exploitive idea. On the other hand, I support them when it’s a rare, one-time-only big project. If you were a poor area with limited funding to build a necessary bridge or piece of infrastructure, running a lottery that outsiders could participate in would be one way of raising the money. I’ve heard some of the exploration missions funded themselves with lotteries as well (you could probably fund a space exploration mission with a lottery).
Yeah, I’m all for a tax on stupidity…but not a regressive one.
Also: the entity which profits from a tax on ignorance is also the same entity responsible for educating children in the first place, moarscienceplz? You really don’t see why that might not work out well?
A much better way of satisfying the urge to gamble without bankrupting the players is a lottery bond. For an example see the UK Premium Bond program (Canada also has something similar I believe) People can buy the bond and have a chance at a big jackpot but the prizes are paid from the interest. The bond can be cashed in for what was originally paid for it at any time but the owner is eligible for prizes for as long as he/she holds the bond. Not a great investment but not a bad one and certainly better than just giving your money away.
lff
So to prevent this misuse and still provide lottery money to deserving causes, we should be lobbying to allow charitable organizations to run their own, local lotteries, where the chances of winning a modest prize might be as high as 1 in 300. Perhaps we should let schools run their own lotteries for educational materials or enrichment activities for all.
I’ve never understood the appeal of gambling, but it might be because I understand odds and statistics. I have visited a casino, (they are all run by various Indian tribes here) and it was awful. I was especially bothered by the elderly in wheelchairs who were feeding their SS into the slot machines a nickle at a time, and the overall air of quiet desperation that permeated the environment. Ever since then my opinion has been that I could just burn the money or throw it out the window, and it would be a better use of my time and resources.
A couple of bucks a week buys me some entertaining fantasies about what I will do with all that money. I could spend it on alcohol, drugs, video games, etc.
it’s not a tax. Nobody pays who doesn’t want to.
“Profits”? Well, it appears you think government is no different from a corporation. Also, that everybody in a government has some kind of hivemind. I, on the other hand, think a government collects money in order to spend it for the peoples’ benefit. I have no doubt that you can provide me with cases where this fails to happen, but I see those cases as aberrations, not as inherent properties of government. Maybe you agree with the Tea Party. I don’t
“A couple of bucks a week buys me some entertaining fantasies about what I will do with all that money. ”
That is the beauty of a lottery bond. It feeds the fantasy but after 20 years of playing a couple of bucks a week (and reinvesting prizes) you could cash in and put a kid through college (or buy a sports car.)
lff
@fredfile #48
So once a quarter (or whatever) the dividends from all the lottery bonds are collected and then randomly given to one (or a few) of the bondholders? Is that how it works? If so, someone could achieve the same result by buying a regular bond and then buying lottery tickets with their dividends. The only difference I see is that it appears you can’t choose to not gamble except by selling the bond.
A big, hearty fuck you to every sanctimonious asshole calling people like me ignorant. Alverant, thank you, you get it. I’m living with family members because I can’t afford to move out. My current job doesn’t pay much. I’ve got a new medical condition (on top of the depression I’m already paying to treat) that’s taking away a not insignificant portion of my paycheck. Saving up the amount I gamble won’t do fucking shit to get me out of the hole I’m in. I know what the fucking odds are. I also know that there are millions of people in a similar situation, many who have it worse off than I do, and we know life aint getting any better no matter what the fuck we do. So I spend a little on something I like to do. Even poor and boarderline poor people like having some fun now and then. I used to drink all the fucking time–it was going to kill me. So I gamble a little instead. Harm reduction is a thing and I’ve no shame for utilizing it. I’ve been prone to addiction for as long as I can remember. I manage the best I can. Criticize the government all you want, but don’t shit on us.
Absolutely.
moarscienceplz:
Hopefully, people don’t want the government to run lotteries so it can pretend to them that it’s funding education.
Oh, wait, that’s what they do? Okay. Well, let’s just hope they don’t and pretend this is about freedom or elitism or some other conservative dogwhistle.
Sure, the point is that “the people” always do the right thing. I’m not convinced, but that is the point.
If you do that, and if education isn’t funded properly though taxation. But it’s not like we must not pay taxes for education if they didn’t depend on state lottos, so there is absolutely no sense in concluding there must be any adverse effects on education.
And it ought to be progressive taxation which puts a larger share of the burden on the wealthy. (You know, Sheldon Adelson or someone like him.) And no, they don’t get a choice. If they don’t like it, fuck ’em.
Which is totally how public education ought to be funded. Obviously.
@moarscienceplz 54
That is pretty much how it works. UK Premium Bonds have two 1 million pound prizes every month plus thousands of others from 25 pounds on up. All bondholders have a chance and the more bonds they hold the better their odds (40,000 pound limit.) Over 80% of the prize fund goes to prizes of 100 pounds or less. They end up paying about the same rate as UK Government bonds. All the details are here –> UK Premium Bonds
Odds of a big payoff are pretty slim of course but so are State Lotteries and that is just throwing your money away; This is a savings plan.
lff
@KellyW. 55
” So I spend a little on something I like to do. Even poor and boarderline poor people like having some fun now and then.”
I agree and you are never going to get rid of gambling. But many could get the same thrill from buying a lottery bond every week and dreaming of the payoff while at the same time putting away money for their kids education.
lff
consciousness razor #57
I’d appreciate it if you’d read my WHOLE post 42 before you enter the joust:
The California voters were told specifically and repeatedly that any lottery revenues were to be on top of normal funding. It’s up to our representatives in the state government to ensure that happens, and it’s up to us to fire them if they don’t.
This is TOTALLY a strawman. I NEVER said or implied any such thing. And I DO NOT believe any such thing.
500 million spent on ads for lottery.
68 billion in lottery sales.
Market it as charitable contribution to schools or as a way to reach your dreams.
Oregon exploiting people with gambling problems, getting 20 times as much from video poker players as from traditional lottery and having 12,000 such machines across the state.
All of this is government funded and advertised as “good”.
21 of the 24 states that supposedly use the lottery to fund education have fallen behind other states in funding of education. In the case of at least North Carolina, this is because they are using the lottery funds INSTEAD of corporate taxes.
These are all facts from the fucking video itself. The segment ends with John saying explicitly that government couldn’t and shouldn’t outlaw gambling but that it is strange that it is in this business and advertising it the way it does, just like it would be strange if it were selling liquor and advertising alcohol purchase as a way of helping school children.
What exactly are you taking issue with moarscienceplz? Do you not see the problems involved in any of the above? Do you really not fucking see it?
moarscienceplz:
This is absolutely rich coming from you. You have been strawmanning from the fucking start. This is most likely an emotional blindspot for you. You feel like you are on the defensive or something. Step back and get a better vantage point, for fuck’s sake.
Oh bullshit.
90% of this thread has been about how gambling is bad, or if not all gambling, then government controlled gambling is bad. I get accused of strawmanning for assuming this means most of you here would like to get rid of it?
What’s “normal funding”? The typical amount that education gets? The amount that it ought to get? More than enough to pay for education?
Why should this be paying for education at all?
Then whatever the fuck you do actually believe is a total mystery to me.
Calling bullshit on your calling bullshit. You barged in here with a strawman at comment fucking 8. For starter’s, Oliver is not dumping on gambling because he thinks it is “sinful”, you disingenuous fuck: He is quite clearly concerned about the role of government in this and the role of false advertising. That’s the key issue. And you just handwave it away.
Besides, as usual, I don’t care much about what you believe. If you don’t, the point is that I don’t see how your arguments are supposed to work. If they don’t work (and you in fact don’t believe some absurd thing which is making them not work), then it’s still your problem that your arguments are broken, even if you don’t really believe all of the things underlying them. In any case, you haven’t connected the dots some other way, and that’s not my problem.
Fred @58 (and other places) –
Leave it to the UK to have an entirely sensible system in place to do something we Americans do disgracefully.
It’s like gambling lite. Sure, you probably won’t win, but you get to take your money home at the end of the day anyway.
The idea of lottery bonds is interesting, and certainly better than straight lotteries. My personal response to lotteries is “I prefer the stock market; it gives better odds.”
*eyeroll*
Americans, stop taking for granted that university costs anything beyond the student’s living expenses and maybe textbooks! Do you have no idea how ridiculous you are! Stage some kind of revolution, I don’t know – but when you’re already thinking up a hypothetical scenario, don’t mistake tuition fees of all things for some unchangeable law of physics.
I’ve always been opposed to state lotteries. I think that if we want government services we should tax ourselves to pay for them.
I’m a bit ambivalent about casino gambling. I’m aware that there are gambling addicts, but while I don’t patronize them myself, I know lots of people who go to casinos on occasional basis and don’t bet the mortgage. My parents, for example, went to Vegas a couple of times a year. They had a strict daily budget, and if they lost it, they went back to the hotel. They considered it an entertainment expense, like seeing a Broadway show or an opera. Should we outlaw their pleasure because others can’t control themselves? (The answer might be yes; I’m just not convinced yet.)
Are we allowed to plan for a future in which we contribute tuition money to our children’s college? Don’t you think it is sensible to plan for the overwhelmingly likeliest scenario?
I remember a Simpson’s episode where Skinner went berserk on Tv after getting a blackboard erasers from the state lottery commission. Wish I could find that clip.
It’s not a stupidity tax, it’s a desperation tax.
It’s more immoral than that. It’s part of the elaborate mechanisms of social control (including religion) that train people to believe there is an effortless way out that can be granted randomly in return for accepting subjection. Worse, it also serves as a subliminal explanation for why some people are filthy rich and others … Just aren’t. It excuses hereditary plutocrats like Mitt Romney and justifies rampant inequality by getting the victims to embrace the con. Any con-man will tell you that once the mark has bought the frame you can take them for anything. Thus you have strong healthy people destroying themselves with drink and wasting money on the lottery. Money they might spend building guillotines, if they had a longer focal-length on capitalism.
@tbp1 #70.
As has already been pointed out, nobody is calling for some sort of complete gambling ban.
Though I hope you realize the parallel between your argument about how some people gamble responsibly on a budget and the fact that some gun owners are responsible.
Should we outlaw their pleasure because others can’t control themselves?
The machines (indeed, the entire environment) are designed to maximize addictive potential. A casino is basically a giant Skinner box, or Pavlov’s doghouse. If the idea was to entertain, rather than to trigger compulsive behavior, casinos would be very different indeed.
Likewise, it would have been good if you’d seen fit to watch the whole video before dumping on John Oliver. Not once did he say or even hint that gambling is bad because of sin; the piece was always about the funding and falsehood of gambling advertising. Essentially, that they are selling a fantasy.
For me, the case for state-run lotteries is historical — lotteries in the form of the local “numbers rackets” were one of the traditional sources of income for organized crime. In the absence of state run lotteries, money that otherwise goes to social services goes instead to criminals.
I’m funny. I can fantasize about what I would do with more money without first making sure I have less money.
the american dream is a crock..
it is what keeps the masses from building them guillotines mentioned above.
gambling is losing with the illusion of a chance to win.
the ignorant would do well to learn about compounding interest and small regular investing before they consider gambling.
lotteries are a tax on stupidity because only the stupid think there is any realistic possibility to win anything at all. so they bet. The stupider the more they bet.
uncle frogy
Jafafa, that cut so close, it made me laugh. You are funny in two different ways.
@ moarscienceplz
You got accused of strawmanning for making shit up and pretending someone was arguing for it. See your comment #8 wherein you declared that Oliver must hate gambling because it’s sinful since you have a friend who goes to the movies a lot. Your arguments have been utterly fucking asinine from the moment you first weighed in.
Chase Cross:
And alcohol was a source of income for organised crime during Prohibition. The solution to that wasn’t state-issued vodka.
As far as I know (as a non-American), most US states still prohibit commercial gambling, so of course criminals step in and fill that niche. But what about states with a less puritanical approach to gambling, such as Massachusetts? Do reputable commercial gambling operations exist there?
Here in the UK, if I were a gambler I could just go to one of several bookies within walking distance. I wouldn’t exactly call them inviting places, since to me they exude an air of addiction and desperation, but as far as I know they’re not mob-run.
Sorry, but the pedant in me has to ask the resident lotto and/or math experts: why do these big lotteries get the name “Mega Millions”–doesn’t that mathematically imply a million “Millions,” or at least a trillion dollars (so…around one third an Iraq War)? Blatant false advertising!
Also, take a look at the range of the odds of things more likely to happen to you than winning a big lottery. For example; the “Odds of dying from an asteroid or comet: between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 250,000.” Holy shit! As cool as asteroid or comet death sound, I say stop putting those lotto profits into schools and start building anti-asteroid missiles ASAP!
That is probably true but I think the profits now go to well connected contractors who run the lotteries – not much better than organized crime (probably often the same people!
Lottery bonds are a better option. In the UK they work through the Treasury.
Also a feature I failed to mention. If you buy a premium bond every week your number of bonds increases so your odds of a big prize get better. Try that with MegaMillions, PowerBall, etc.
lff
I used to live in Baltimore, Maryland, where the lottery monies were used to pay for new stadiums (instead of, say, improving old schools) since the lottery was “found money” … The predictable end result was that a huge amount of wealth was transferred from the poorest segment of the population to the football/baseball team franchises, real estate speculators who had bought the properties near the stadia, construction companies, etc — hence my earlier comment about guillotines. If the people who took that shot at wealth realized how badly they had been screwed by their “representatives” it would have been pitchforks, torches, and tumbrils. It should have been. I don’t favor violence but ruthless re-appropriation and re-distribution of wealth (with the threat of madame guillotine) would have been appropriate. I know Baltimore wasn’t the only city that did that, either. How much did George Bush net from his deal on the Rangers and their stadium? $14 million on a $600,000 investment $500,000 of which was borrowed? A deal like that is as close to a sure thing as possible, as opposed to the 1:175000000 odds on the lottery ticket.
But, hey, who’s looking? You could be worth as much as George Bush, too, if your luck is in. I once calculated that you’re about 7 times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning than you are to win the lottery — and most people who are struck by lightning survive.
States that declare war on the poor would have more success testing welfare recipients for lottery tickets than testing for testdrugs. No, I’m not trying to give them ideas.
My 8y/o is just getting to the point where he wants to buy more things/bigger things than his (rather paltry) will allow for with any speed. And we drive by a MegaMillions & Powerball sign twice a week on the way home from swim team. Cue discussions on probabilities and wise money management. (And how to better advertise his weed-pulling business so he can buy that RC plane sooner!)
I think I finally got through to him when I pointed out that he spends $3/week on entering a Pokemon tournament every Saturday, and he’s pretty much guaranteed to have fun and win at least a starter pack of cards. If he spent that $3 on a lottery ticket, he’d just be losing $3 with nothing to show for it.
Rather paltry allowance*. We’re seriously stingy, and half of it gets direct deposited straight into a savings account!
I’m just going to throw this out there. Yes, lotteries make money for the state, but perhaps we could abolish state lotteries while simultaneously taxing the rich a bit more to cover the lost income?
…
Maybe?
perhaps we could abolish state lotteries while simultaneously taxing the rich a bit more to cover the lost income?
Cutting military expenditures to something more reasonable – like, about 5% of our current spend – would also help. Taxing the rich, and corporations, too. The US is incredibly wealthy, and the current system resembles nothing more than a flock of starving sheep getting shorn over and over again. That it is tolerated is a testament to the effectiveness of propaganda fed to poorly-educated masses.
Dark Jaguar, #89
How will new jobs get created, then? Everybody knows if you ask very rich people who live in the same country and use the same resources as poor people to contribute more to the common cause, jobs stop getting created. Don’t you care that our children will grow up to find we’ve left them a country with no jobs?
Another thing that would help (in addition to reducing or eliminating spending on
bigger peniseswar toys) would be reducing or eliminating subsidies paid to Big Oil. Worldwioe, fossil fuel subsides were c.500bn USD in 2011 alone, whilst renewable was at most 90bn USD.Big Oil is one of the most profitable “industries” on the planet, and outright owns many lawyers and politicians.
Alas, it appears to be illegal to buy UK (or any other) premium bonds if you live in most of the USA. Our anti-gambling laws make it so it’s illegal to own any gambling stock. Though you can gamble with the state-run lotteries.
@27 Josh:
Are you also arguing then that Anheuser-Busch should have moral shame for (some of) their target audience being alcoholics? What about the corner “bottle shop”/”package store”? Should ConAgra bear moral shame for the national obesity epidemic, or Hostess brands, or Bi-Lo?
Let’s just generalize the question: when one respects the fact that “People are allowed to make their own choices”, what extent of guilt/shame do they bear for the decisions and actions of another?
Alexander: You seem to missing “the government” part of the equation. It’s kind of important.
Well, what a libertudian amoral attitude. Easy Peasy, when you vote for “freedom” and “choice”, by taking the easy way out, instead of the more logical, stable, and cheaper approach to education funding like an income tax, without the repercussions of that decision on negatively affecting the poorest of society.
Alexander: If Anheuser-Busch was trying to spin the sale of alcohol as something that you get drunk with to drown out the conditions of poverty, then they probably should be ashamed. If they were deliberately making their drinks as addictive as possible, then they should be ashamed. Prohibition concerns make actually doing anything about it difficult regardless, but the shame should be there under those circumstances. Similarly, cigarette companies really should feel moral shame over the ludicrous amount of work they put into making cigarettes as addictive as possible, and the giant web of lies they tried to spin about smoking not being dangerous.
Still, they at least have the excuse of being private entities. The state is (in theory) a representative of the people as a whole, aimed not at making profit but at improving the lives of the people who make it up (very much in theory and not in practice). There’s a higher standard there.
@95 anteprepro:
I saw that was part of the original argument, but I do not understand why this is important to the argument. When the government induces bad decisions, as with the lottery, does this impose a moral stain that corporations would not bear? If so, why?—or if not, how far does this moral imperative actually extend?
Simply stating “it is important” does not help me to understand; please elucidate.
when one respects the fact that “People are allowed to make their own choices”, what extent of guilt/shame do they bear for the decisions and actions of another?
It’s proportional to the degree to which they influence the other’s decision. If someone decides they are going to become obese, as a fashion statement, we might rightly conclude that they had exercised a maximum amount of choice. If someone becomes obese because their food options are limited, or marketing promotes carb-laden junk as “fat free” we can conclude that their choice is less than the maximum – either through deception or ignorance. It doesn’t matter whether it’s deception or ignorance or limitation of options, the individuals freedom of choice has been reduced – and, appropriately, we can impute some of the blame (or credit if it’s a good choice) based on the reduction. Note that if you want to take positive credit for altering someone’s choice (by giving them good advice, or limiting their options) you should be willing to shoulder blame if the situation is not beneficial.
Imagine a world in which government tried to make smoking less attractive by applying punitive taxes to cigarettes. We might credit government with a favorable public health outcome commensurate to the degree to which the government reduced the public’s ability to choose to harm themselves. Imagine a world in which the government made serving in the military economically attractive – disproportionately so – to the poor. We might blame government for the injuries and pychological damage that resulted from making a dangerous profession artificially more attractive.
We acknowledge that someone might still choose to do something dangerous. In a society in which tobacco was unavailable I might shred automobile tires and smoke that, and we would presumably fully blame me for my choice, since I had gone out of my way to hurt myself. Yet we would blame the company upwind from me that disposed of automobile tires by burning them if I suffered injury due to inhaling the smoke.
See how that works? Ethics is only rocket science if you’re trying to obfuscate it. An the degree to which someone tries to obfuscate simple ethical propositions is an indicator of how honest they are being, and how ethical.
When the government induces bad decisions, as with the lottery, does this impose a moral stain that corporations would not bear? If so, why?
Yes, because to the degree that you remove choice from someone, you shoulder the blame or credit for the resulting outcome.
stain that corporations would not bear
It’s irrelevant if it’s a corporation or a government, to the degree that the individuals’ choices are represented by that government. In principle, in a democratic government, the people’s choices are presumed to be factored in through representation. In practice, if the government is a pseudodemocracy where the people’s choices are largely irrelevant, then the individual cannot be assessed any blame for a choice that they have been disempowered from actually making. In that sense, it is exactly the same as the case where a corporation makes decisions affecting its employees and the employees have no say in the outcome. The degree of blame an individual might be assessed in that case is dependent on their opportunity to go somewhere else; that’s why it’s annoying to anarchists when believers in government tell them “if you don’t like it – go somewhere else” if there is nowhere else.
Blaming an individual for their interactions with a government or a corporation is akin to blaming someone for losing a rigged card game when they are not allowed to leave the table and they’re told they lose if they don’t play.
@96 Nerd of Redhead:
I feel like your comment contains some sort of run-on sentence as I’m not quite sure I understood what you were saying. Let me try rephrasing and correct me if I’ve mis-summarized your argument:
Which, if I’m correct in my interpretation, is a nice consequentialist argument to tie in with @97 Knabb’s comment: since the (official) charter of the US government calls for it to improve the lives of the citizens, it will bear a special shame on any actions which go against that charter for that reason (as well as any shame that may be attached to gambling being a vice, or targeting a vulnerable segments of the population, or whatever your morality demands).
THIS was the sort of explanatory comment I was hoping for. Thank you.
Nope, you got it wrong. What I was saying is that the government had no business putting in a lottery when a cheaper, easier, and better alternative was always available. Income tax, which doesn’t hit the poorest people the hardest.
Who gives shit what you want to hear, if it supports liberturdism, and the freedom to make poor people poorer. And call it bad decision making on their own part. Victim blaming all the way down.
@103 Nerd of Redhead.
I think you’re talking past each other at this point. Alexander is basically saying that they the government is responsible for the harm done in swapping out some taxation for a lottery, and essentially agreeing both with that and with my (and other’s, I was just explicitly named). If there’s any motivated reasoning, it’s probably trying to justify an existing dislike for the lottery with the acknowledgement that people do get to make their own choices.
It’s not a particularly hard set of ideas to bridge, given just how much influence is there is over what choices can be made and how hard they are to enact, and the obvious responsibilities involved in creating systems which govern these choices, but happening to overlook a particular obvious idea is hardly promoting libertarianism. That’s the sort of thing we’d need to look elsewhere* to find.
*By which I mean “moarscienceplz’s posts”.
@ 103 Nerd of Redhead:
I am trying to understand other people’s posts — and if you read my two comments prior to @102 they were only asking questions, not making any sort of position. The one time I take a position, it does agree that the lottery is morally bankrupt — albeit for different reasons — even if that also is summarizing another poster’s (apparent) position.
When I agree with someone’s conclusion but arrived through clearly different logic, I want to understand the route which they took. Their arguments may be stronger or more consistent than the ones I had been using so far. Concluding that I am taking an opposing position simply from either (a) asking clarifying questions after clearly having misunderstood your post, or (b) not presenting exactly the same argument, is an astoundingly bad leap of logic.
Marcus Ranum, fuck you, too. Obese is a medicalized word used to speak of fat people negatively. Go read up on fatphobia–you need to educate yourself. We don’t get fat because we were deceived or because we’re ignorant. Cut that shit the fuck out.
I’m calling yall out. You don’t really care for the poor. If you did, you wouldn’t condescend to us or talk about us like we aren’t even in the room: “Oh, those poor, poor people! They’re just too ignorant to know any better!”
Kellyw
fuck you, too. Obese is a medicalized word used to speak of fat people negatively. Go read up on fatphobia–you need to educate yourself. We don’t get fat because we were deceived or because we’re ignorant. Cut that shit the fuck out.
I had no idea. Seriously. I’ll go read up a bit. uh… OK, so the wikipedia page on the word doesn’t even mention that its use is contested. Are you kidding me? Link please?
WRT to “you don’t care about the poor” oh, really? You don’t know a thing about me except what I say here. Support that claim or kiss my (BTW, it’s fat) ass.
http://fatheffalump.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/an-open-letter-to-professionals/
http://fatoutloud.tumbler.com/post/57690489555/fat-acceptance-101
http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/do-you-have-to-call-yourself-fat/
Really, you couldn’t find anything? You didn’t even fucking try.
And the second part of my post was a general to you all (the word y’all–I didn’t put in the apostrophe). If you aren’t treating poor people like they’re ignorant, then I’m obviously not talking to you. If you are, the message applies.
Also, I’d rather not kiss your ass and I really don’t want you kissing mine, so you can fuck off instead.
Alexander, I’m looking at the lottery from a quality system aspect. In other words, did it do you claimed it would it do, and did it cause any unexpected problems that should be rectified. In my industry, it is called a CAPA (corrective and preventative actions) system.
When the lottery was sold to the people of Michigan, there were several implications, and several facts that have changed.
First, at that time, gambling was legal only in Nevada and New Jersey/Atlantic City, and foreign places like Windsor, Ontario (across the St. Clair river from Detroit), et alia‚ so it was a chance to gamble on your own turf.
Second, in selling the lottery, the implication was that the monies from the lottery would be added to the total amount of monies used by the state to support K-university education.
Third, it was presumed the people buying the lottery tickets would be representative of the entire state of Michigan.
So the lottery bill passed.
Now, what are the facts, and did it solve the problem it was supposed to, and not cause another?
First, with gambling casinos owned by first nations tribes proliferating, there are gambling establishments within an easy drive in most places. My father goes to one about thirty miles away from him once a week just to get out of the apartment. The Patowatomi Casino in Kenosha is about the same distance north of me. And I’ve never set foot in it, and have no plans to do so. So, the concept of there not being gambling available locally is now bullshit.
Second, what happened was that the money went toward education, but he legislature lowered the amount coming from the general fund by the same amount or more than what the lottery provided. Same as here in Illinois. This is a failure by the CAPA system, as it didn’t do what it claimed.
Third, the majority of people buying tickets, and tickets sold, are to those below in the median income. In other words, it became a tax on the poor to support education state-wide.
So by any quality system, the state lotteries should be trashed for a better method of raising funds in a manner that puts the burden of paying those taxes where it belongs, on those with the money to pay those taxes. Which is the income tax.
This why I don’t think much of state lotteries.
And what is one of life’s little ironies, the Potawatomie tribe was involved in the skirmish that gave the town where I grew up its name: Battle Creek.
@106 Kellyw:
After double checking and confirming I originally used the term “obese” in this thread, let me redirect your anger for a moment; it is possible that Marcus was using that example only in response to my having already done so.
The medical community defines ‘obesity’ as body fat deposits that pose a heightened risk to health. This does not refer to a specific weight, body type, clothing size, or any other simple measurement. The line wherein health risks are affected will vary from one person to another sufficiently to render irrelevant any system reliant on those assessments alone (including the “BMI” favored by many health officials). It was solely in that context of risk — and not in reference to western society’s warped body image — that I intended to use the term “obesity”. If that felt like a personal attack, I apologize for the miscommunication. Since in that post I named only the person to whom I was replying, and did not even apply the term to them, I did not expect for any offense to be taken.
On the other hand, if you were offended by the mere idea that adipose tissue can be altered to an unhealthy extent by ones lifestyle, diet or actions — rather than being some ironclad, inviolate facet of metabolism — then I feel there is nothing I need apologize for.
@109 Nerd of Redhead:
While I favor (by far) the argument made much earlier in the thread about the horrifically abusive implementations of the lottery (as funding for a perpetual expenditure, thus requiring a perpetual group of players) over a purely consequentialist analysis, I cannot deny it’s applicability. I know of very few state lotteries where the funds did not eventually become a replacement rather than a supplement; such is the cursed nature of bureaucracy.
Personally, I’m not a gambler; while I have the knowledge to be the third person in this comic, I also have absolutely no inclination for such activity. As a result, arguing that the lottery is bad because players don’t understand the odds (or know how to calculate their expected return value) sounds to me like describing a fault with our educational system, rather than one intrinsic to the lottery. (It’s not that I am unsympathetic, but that there is a system in place that supposedly should prevent such outcomes. When the preventative measures also fail, where does the fault truly lie?)
kellyw, #106
Marcus was talking about the idea of becoming obese. That’s nothing like using the label “the obese” to treat people like they’re less human. It’s more like saying someone becomes asthmatic. There’s absolutely no judgement or devaluing going on there.
I didn’t pick 1-6 because they’re apparently the most commonly picked lottery numbers – clearly there are a lot of people out there who understand probability but still play.
Surely those numbers are no less likely than any others? Why should understanding probability mean you not pick them>
@ rossthompson
I think he meant that if 1-6 did come up (and they are indeed no less likely than any others) he would have to share the prize with the other people who understand probability ;-)
O.o
wow. that is some seriously deranged level of disconnect from you. RIGHT after being accused of strawmanning, you go right on ahead and do just that. with a straight face.
you’re one scary motherfucker.
…and obviously NOT worth debating ANYTHING with. you aren’t just dishonest, you appear to be singularly INCAPABLE of being honest! that’s not something that can be reasoned with.
I pity you.
@ Alexander
I was “diagnosed” as “obese” by my doctor. She used my weight vs. height to make the diagnosis, so BMI is used, and weight as a measurement comes into play. I am a death fat (“morbidly obese”). I register a whopping 47.42 on the Obesity Scale.
I’m fuckin laughing now–that was the message I got when I plugged in my numbers at bmi-calculator.net.
According to the medical establishment (and the internet), I should be a walking ball of type 2 diabetes and ready to die at any moment of myriad medical problems. Because I am a death fat, people have had no problem telling me, in various ways, that I should lose weight “for my health”. Because of the never ending war on obesity spearheaded by the medical establishment, everyone thinks they’re a fucking expert on my own body. Got news for everyone–the only way you can determine someone’s health is by running actual fucking tests (like blood work), not looking at a height chart and reading the numbers on a scale. I can tell that all the people ’splainin didn’t read the links I posted. I expected better from this group. If there is anyone still reading this thread that is interested/would actually like to learn something, there‘s plenty of bloggers telling it like it is from the fat perspective. Here’s a couple of links:
http://fathealth.wordpress.com/ (First, Do No Harm — submitted stories of fat people discriminated against by medical professionals)
http://www.shakesville.com/2014/02/today-in-fat-hatred.html (check out the links in the blog)
@117 Oh joy the “fat acceptance” thing breaking way into full denialism. What’s next are you going to shame “skinny bitches”? Also you may as well cite AIG to deny evolution or Jenny McCarthy to show how dangerous vaccines are.
Fuck off, asshole. Why is it your fucking business whether someone else loves her body or not? Go get back to your important Saturday agenda, there are many goats in your herd needing their daily oral sex, shitweasel.
When did I do that? I just saw someone denying health risks and called her out on it. And nice that you insult my sexuality in response to it.
Why is it your fucking business whether someone else is fat, I repeat? Keep your nose the fuck out of other people’s business. If she’s happy, and healthy, how the fuck do you get to claim any different, and whyvthe fuck should anyone give a rats arse what you think about it? Fuck off with your policing of other people’s bodies, shitstain.