Ravenwood - 03/23/05 07:15 AM
I had to laugh at Taranto's story about the Powerball lottery.
"The agency running the Powerball lottery might decrease the odds of winning the multimillion-dollar jackpot to stem a record-setting run of winners that is keeping jackpots small and, the agency says, causing ticket sales to plunge," reports the Chicago Sun-Times.There is a reason why most lottery winners are broke again within 10 years.So let's see if we have this straight: Because too many people are winning the lottery, not enough people are buying tickets, so lottery officials are responding by making the odds even worse. They aren't kidding when they say a lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
He's wrong in this case. Making the odds of winning lower just makes the jackpots bigger without changing anything else. The return on a wager is unchanged : you just get fewer winners of more money with the same fraction payout.
Unless they change the fraction of payout. If they just roll the pot over when it's unwon, there's no change in the payout.
People are more likely to be attracted by bigger pots and not so dissuaded by smaller odds, since an interesting dream is being sold and the dream doesn't care much about the odds. So in that sense it's for people not good at math, but then maybe math is not good at some things and that's math's way of not noticing it.
I myself think lotteries ought to fund all of government, replacing taxes entirely. Certainly, at least you ought to be allowed to purchase lottery tickets with food stamps.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at March 24, 2005 3:52 AMThere is a reason why most lottery winners are broke again within 10 years.
Yea, the reason is Cancer of Unearned, the cancer affected they're brain; my parents have it, not the lottery winners, their inheritance. Same thing...unearned money.
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