This quote from Noah Brand is perfectly expressed:
People joke about lottery tickets as a tax on people who are bad at math, but I don’t think that’s true. Lottery tickets are a carrying charge for hope. Between the time you buy the ticket and the time the drawing reconfirms that you’re a loser, there’s a window where you have this bare edge of hope, this idea that maybe, just maybe, in a few days you won’t have to be afraid or ashamed any more. Sure, rationally you know that one chance in a hundred million isn’t very good, but the sweet taste of that maybe is worth a dollar.
I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, but when I was 19 or so I returned a “Publishers Clearing House” sweepstakes entry. After which I found myself dreaming, again and again, of how I’d use the money if I won. It supplanted my usual daydreams. I found it unnerving, and haven’t participated in any such thing since.
By the way, I don’t see anything wrong with buying a lottery ticket. I don’t do it because my mind doesn’t handle it well, but I’m sure others can just enjoy it for the entertainment value of a few days extra hope, and that’s fine.
A few years ago, I bought a few lottery tickets during the summer and experienced exactly the same thing. The exhilaration of daydreaming about that money was actually almost painful. My heart pounded and my head hurt. I stopped buying tickets because I couldn’t quite handle the anxiety, but the feeling was both intense and pleasurable. It certainly provided as much joy, dollar for dollar, as many other entertainments at which no one bats an eye.
Agreed – I limit myself by having worked out the expected value of the two big lotteries here at various payouts (Canadian lotteries pay what they say they pay, loto winnings are taxfree and immediate unless otherwise stated). and I only buy tickets when the EV reaches 1. For the 6/49, that’s around $22 million, and I think it’s over $30 million for the Max.
But when it comes up, I enjoy a little daydreaming of how many people I could give money to if I won. How many lives I could make better. How many educations I could fund.
Let the rich sneer. They’d feel different down here where the church mice look like yuppies.
I would be interested to see how lottery sales correlate to income inequality. It seems to me that as poverty increases so would the amount of hope implicit in lottery tickets.
I once met a lawyer who specialized in lottery winners and their various problems. He told me that most people who win the lottery end up very unhappy (and broke) as a result.
I of course would be different: the acquisition of $30 million would make me perfectly happy.
I have not found the experience unnerving or anxiety-inducing. But, I have approached it as an enjoyable time for wishful thinking.
It provides a few days of different daydreams about, as CaitieCat said, the things I might do and the people I might help. Plus, it helped my significant other and I have some interesting conversations that revealed, both to ourselves and to each other, the sorts of priorities we have and the things we value.
That is probably what I found most enjoyable.
-Jut
Well, I ran what numbers I had for my home state, Maryland. I can’t find actual data for year to year gini index shifts, but looking at general trends over the past 10 years, there doesn’t appear to be much of a correlation. Probably because increases in the gini coefficient also mean a relative loss of disposable income, which impacts lottery sales negatively. The strongest link I found was between sales and stimulative governmental actions (like the bush tax cuts or the 2008 stimulus).
I enter the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes every year and don’t worry about it at all. I’m simply gambling 44 cents (current price of a first-class stamp) on an extremely unlikely huge return. It takes about five minutes to arrange the entries per instructions, and then I don’t waste another thought on the issue. What’s the big deal?
I don’t buy lottery tickets, but I buy scratchers for that brief thrill of, “Will I win my money back?” I understand what the author means about the small charge of hope. For me, it’s a sporadic thing for when I feel “lucky” and have an extra dollar or two. Maybe one day I’ll win the second-chance drawing and I can pay back my student loans, or afford a house. It’s like buying a key that might fit your dreams. Not something to rely on, but it helps you mentally get through the days where your paycheck won’t pay for your rent or groceries.
I’ve never bought a lottery ticket (or gambled in any other way) and I cannot even follow your argument. Or rather, I cannot understand why it could not be applied to any other self destructive behaviour. And if you think that lottery and other forms of gambling have not destroyed lives, you live in a different world than mine.
Of course, the present company clearly has no problem controlling its gambling expenses… Just like all drug users, adrenaline junkies, or sex addicts I know get more from their ‘hobby’ than they lose. By the way, I know people who got put on academic warning/thrown out of the Institute because drugs were more fun than studying, my best friend is limping because he surfed through the crack of Dana’s Rock last Sunday, and a friend has an ex who, despite her MEng, prostitutes herself (including bestiality) because she gets depressed without ever-more-extreme sex.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for other people destroying their lives if they want to. But I cannot help but despise the people who help them do so. And when it’s the government that runs the scam, I think there’s something seriously wrong.
I think that’s a decent point. “I enjoy the hope that a lottery ticket brings me” ignores the fact that, statistically, it is a false hope. If the illusion of hope is a defense of the lottery, then the value of a false sense of spiritual awakening is a defense of any manner of hallucinatory drugs (and perhaps it is reasonable defense?–but I’m just sayin’.)
Of course, if the lottery is a waste of time and money, but victimless, then criticisms of it are pointless. Which connects to another thing that Sebastian said:
Are you saying here that the lottery, combined with other forms of gambling, has destroyed lives? Or are you saying that the lottery has, by itself, destroyed lives, and other forms of gambling have destroyed lives, too?
If your point is the former, then I think your point is not well taken. That’s like saying that “Drinking milk and drinking poison have destroyed lives.” Is there evidence that a significant number of people’s lives have been destroyed by the lottery, and the lottery alone?
I used to work for a local moveing company. Every morning we’d fill up the trucks at the same gas station in a ‘lower income’ neighborhood. It was pretty common to see people buy 20+ dollors in lottery/scratch off tickets. I suppose you can argue that they needed to spend a decent chunk of change to feel like they’d win and that it was just entertainment. That adds up pretty fast. Those are the people being taxed on bad math skills.
70 billions here, 70 billions there, and soon enough, you are talking real money. Google ‘spent thousands on lottery’ and you will read stories about people complaining that the lottery was won by someone who spent much less than the thousands they did. The local news recently talked about a small business owner bankrupted by his daughter who spent all of the liquidity on the California lottery. She won 50 dollars.
It’s gambling, and everything that applies to gambling applies to the lottery. I do not know whether people go hungry because of the lottery, but I know a few (single, male, blue collar) people who use ALL of their disposable income on scratch tickets. I was waiting on a spare part with one of them, and he ended up admitting he had spent more than six thousands on scratch tickets since he got his maintenance job.
The lottery is one of the many things that prevent people from pulling themselves from poverty.
““I enjoy the hope that a lottery ticket brings me” ignores the fact that, statistically, it is a false hope. If the illusion of hope is a defense of the lottery, then the value of a false sense of spiritual awakening is a defense of any manner of hallucinatory drugs ”
Yikes. If we’re going to start telling the truth around here, I’m leaving.
False hopes can be strictly necessary in a bad world. I hope that the political world isn’t so completely screwed up that working to change it in ways I think are better isn’t a fool’s errand. I’ve rarely seen it work, and often had my hopes dashed, but life would be very difficult to bear if I didn’t cling to that hope a little bit.
Like any good thing at all, hope can be mis-channeled or perverted into something that causes all sorts of bad things. But that isn’t a function of the lottery, or even hope, but the fact that all good things can be corrupted.
The lottery isn’t a ‘good thing’ per se, but it is no worse than many false hopes, and decidedly better than many false hopes (like the false hope that your abuser will change for example).
(For clarity please note there are 2 Sebastians on this thread).
I readn an interestin case on that recently. It stemmed from one of those “never thought of that” situations:
When the state sells scratch cards, they print a lot of them for a series. Only a few are winners. Sometimes the winning card gets bought/scratched very early in the process.
What then? Is the state obliged to publicize when they have won? Or can they keep on selling the rest of the “win $10,000!” scratch cards even though it is literally impossible to win the prize?
The court held that they could still be sold. It didn’t use the logic in this post, but if you’re OK with the “cheap hope” then you should also be OK with that holding.
@Sebastian, I will see you the number of lives ruined by gambling, and raise you the number of lives ruined by alcohol.
Does that mean that I can’t have a glass of wine with dinner? It’s only self-destructive if done to excess. I quite fail to see how my one glass of wine or my one occasional lottery ticket are “self-destructive.” Perhaps you can enlighten me.
Gotta love the Edit function on this site!! I am apparently quite unable to type anything right the first time around!
Recent research is pretty clear on the significant positive value of the actual sense of spiritual awakening created by the use of hallucinogenic drugs. I think the case is stronger for the positive value of responsible use of hallucinogens than it is for the responsible use of lottery tickets.
But I agree with no-H Sebastian that the use of lotteries as a system of voluntary taxation is reprehensible.
I hate scratch tickets, with their only momentary hit of hope/excitement, far more than the lottery, which can be used fairly cheaply as an extended basis for fantasizing about becoming momentarily rich before becoming bankrupt and miserable.
Noah Brand is dead on. I always thought that that joke about it being a tax on people who are bad at math was primarily told by people who don’t have soul-crushing, hope-shredding jobs (or a soul-crushing, hope-shredding lack of one) and thus missed seeing what was obvious: that it’s about hope. Even a 1 in 23-or-whatever millions hope. Because for too many people in this country (and this world), those are better odds than they get anywhere else in life.
@Susan #4: If I can beat the odds by winning the lottery, I’ll risk the odds about ending up happier having done so. (Not that I actually play these days, but I did a few times in the past, when I was low enough.)
Is it really? Are those people just $20 a week from a comfortable middle-class lifestyle? Are they setting aside promotions, job training or education to play the lottery?
Mythago,
My understanding is that lotteries are disporportionately played by the poor, and that the aggregate amount is quite high.
It’s certainly cheaper than smoking or drinking, at least if you only spend $1 or $2 / week. But the scratch tix are the real killer. You don’t have any limits and they cost a lot more to begin with. It’s also impossible to know the odds before you play, and some of them are designed to falsely suggest that there is an element of skill. And of course some of them cost $5 or $10. Start buying one or two of those per week and you’re talking about real money, especially added up over years.
I’ve seen a lot of people buy scratch tix. I’ve seen a lot of people cash them in. Almost everyone who cashs them in buys…. more scratch tix. They are tailor-made to appeal to people who are compulsive or impulse gamblers; they’re no different than having a government-sponsored slot machine on the corner.
It seems that my English is so bad that I cannot get my point across to native speakers. Let me try again… and please, can those who actually have some command of the language explain where I originally went wrong.
My original statements: present company clearly has no problem controlling its gambling expenses… [snip] I’m all for other people destroying their lives if they want to [snip] When it’s the government that runs the scam, I think there’s something seriously wrong
To this, Susan replies: Does that mean that I can’t have a glass of wine with dinner? It’s only self-destructive if done to excess. I quite fail to see how my one glass of wine or my one occasional lottery ticket are “self-destructive.” Perhaps you can enlighten me.
No, Susan, as I tried to say above, I oppose banning potentially dangerous behaviour, as long as it only endangers the person who chose to indulge. Yes, Susan, as I tried to say above, you are clearly one of those who have it all under control. No, Susan, you are not destroying yourself, but it appears that there are people who destroy their lives through alcohol or gambling. I think that the government is despicable for banning gambling, often on moral grounds, and then printing scratch tickets to siphon the disposable income of vulnerable (poor, addiction prone, lacking understanding of statistics, what have you) people.
And to try to elucidate the matter with the alcohol analogy you seem to prefer: I do not advocate another Prohibition, and I would be even more upset if the California government banned private entities from selling alcohol in any form, and then started selling rotgut at exorbitant prices.
For comparison, European roulette’s best payout is 97.3%, on-line casinos’ is often 95%, Las Vegas roulette ‘s can exceed 94%, Las Vegas slot machines’ must be 75%… California scratch tickets? Only 58% after repeated legislated increases in payout percentage, every one but the last prompted by contractors channeling too much of the intake into administrative and production costs. Some scratchers used to pay out at 17%.
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And to mythago:
Is it really? Are those people just $20 a week from a comfortable middle-class lifestyle? Are they setting aside promotions, job training or education to play the lottery?
Where do you get the $20? 70 billions per year, 308 millions population, 76% allowed to play, 50% to 60% of those play, likelihood to play decreases with income, 20% of those who ever play are responsible for 90% of the cost… Dirichlet’s principle suggests that there are a hundreds of thousands, likely poor, who spend more than 5000 per year. Google will offer examples of people who waste 5 and 6 digits on a single drawing, often with someone else’s money. I gave an example of someone who wasted 6K. Many other posters testify to the compulsive use of scratch tickets. And anyway… is even 1000 dollars per year a trivial amount to waste on false hope? And even if it is, should the government be making it possible?
As for what the players are setting aside, who knows? After the false hope they are treated to real disappointment and a lighter wallet. Once some of them have blown everything they could spare, and probably a bit they could not, are they closer or further to a ‘comfortable middle class lifestyle’?
gin-and-whiskey @20/Sebastian @21: I’m not saying the money couldn’t be spend better elsewhere, or that it’s OK for the government to balance its budget on the hopes of poor people (though I’m guessing people who play regularly do win small prizes from time to time, which keeps them going). I’m saying that for somebody mired in poverty, $10 or even $20 a week is not the difference between staying where they are and a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Yes, we can look at that and go “wow, that’s a thousand bucks a year!” But from that person’s POV, a thousand bucks a year may not make any overall difference in their situation. It’s not enough to buy a car or get an education or make up for chronic health problems, but what if that ‘investment’ pays off in a jackpot?
I’m not defending it. I’m saying I understand the emotional logic.