4 ms·
I would never think of playing the lottery or engaging in any other form of gambling because I understand the odds are always in favor of the house. I understan
by ideonexus 11y ago
I would never think of playing the lottery or engaging in any other form of gambling because I understand the odds are always in favor of the house. I understand that I'm going to lose money. What a terrible irony that we fund public education with a lottery that relies on participation by those who don't understand basic math?
But I see this as part of a larger trend of preying on the poor. Watching far-right media, I see poor people being told to invest heavily in gold, reverse mortgages, guns, and raging them up into sending all their money to political organizations whose sole purpose is to take money from the angry. And there are plenty of examples on the left as well (people investing in college degrees for the sake of college degrees without any idea if their field of study is a good investment or not). I don't know how we break these cycles and inspire low-income American citizens to temper their emotions and rationally invest in their futures.
- walshemj 11y agoThat depends if the prize is large enough then the pot odds are such it does make sense to bet on the lottery.
- nmrm2 11y ago1. This basically never happens. 2. Don't compare to letting the money sit under a matress. Insteaad, compare with other investments. Buying a lottery ticket doesn't make sense when measured purely in terms of profit, even when the expected profit is non-negative.
- cauterized 11y agoThen neither does buying a movie ticket make sense. Of course it doesn't make sense if you frame it as an investment. But people don't necessarily buy lottery tickets expecting to win and more than you or I sit down at a slot machine expecting to walk away with more money than we arrived with. They buy them as entertainment or a reason to hope or dream for a few days.
- nmrm2 11y agowalshemj's comment was clearly referring to cases where the expected profit of a lottery ticket is positive ("pot odds are such it does make sense to bet on the lottery"). I'm working from walshemj's assumptions about how risk and benefit should be measured, which is in terms of monetary value.
- walshemj 11y agoIt has ocasionaly in the UK on big rollovers for the UK and Euro Lotteries.
- spinlock 11y agoNot really. The lottery is split up among the winners. When there is a big pot, you get proportionally more people playing the lotto. So, the expected payout to one individual actually drops as the payout rises.
- walshemj 11y agoBut you are still making a profit on the ticket
- mikeash 11y agoThe decreasing marginal utility of money means it doesn't make sense even then.
- spinlock 11y agoI was going to make a similar comment (i.e. lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math) but I don't think that's entirely the case. My feeling is that it's more about desperation than calculation.
- kenjackson 11y agoWhile I agree it does prey on tne poor, I don't agree that they don't necessarily understand basic math. While the expected value of a lottery ticket may be worth less than the cost to purchase, it still might make sense to purchase.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]