4 ms·

Important to remember it was paid for from Georgia lotto proceeds, making it a tax on the poor to pay for middle-class education. Disclaimer: Hope recipient

cobookman 8y ago
Tax, "a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.". Nothing about the lotto is compulsory or based on income. I don't think its fair to say that its a "tax on the poor". This scholarship has been great for the state overall and was a smart move. Georgia Tech is now a top 5 engineering school in the us, and top 10 worldwide. UGA became a highly ranked University. The tier 3 schools became tier 2, and tier 2 schools tier 1. If it wasn't for this scholarship you'd have overall worse schools, and a brain drain on your hands.
- camgunz 8y ago
  Lotteries are marketed pretty directly to lower income folks, and you can tell it's working because they're the ones buying most of the tickets. They also spend a higher percentage of their income on it. This is just sort of empirically clear, like do you see lottery signs in upper middle class areas? Nope. You see them in the "poor" grocery stores (not Whole Foods), gas stations, and liquor stores. For maximum convenience, some check cashing/pay day loans have lottery booths too. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the-poor-2012-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the-poor-... > If it wasn't for this scholarship you'd have overall worse schools, and a brain drain on your hands. I mean, if you're OK with this kind of redistribution (FWIW I am too, it makes a lot of sense) then I think we should ask the richest of us to foot it, not the poorest of us.
  - curun1r 8y ago
    They're marketed at that target segment to avoid the problems that came with not providing a state-sponsored version of those services. If you look back at the history of the lottery, it started out as black market, unregulated gambling that led to violence and other crime as the people running the often-fixed games fought over the right to fleece people. The modern, state-run lotteries just provide an outlet for gambling that would happen anyways.
    - camgunz 8y ago
      > If you look back at the history of the lottery, it started out as black market, unregulated gambling that led to violence and other crime as the people running the often-fixed games fought over the right to fleece people. I think a game (quoting Powerball here) where your odds are 1:292,201,338 is by definition a fleece. All that happened here is the state is reserving that right for itself, justifying it as taxing a vice. This is a common theme -- look at cigarettes and alcohol -- but in basically every case it's lower income people who are shelling out. > The modern, state-run lotteries just provide an outlet for gambling that would happen anyways. This is a common policy argument (see cigarettes/alcohol above or legalizing drugs), but does this even make sense? White collar crime is pretty rampant, so what if we legalize it and make an embezzling tax? Or human trafficking is a persistent scourge, what if we legalize it and tax it? Furthermore, these vice taxes are regressive flat taxes. If we start legalizing things and replacing the criminality with a tax, really that only opens it up to people with means. It's still ruinous for lower income people to engage with it. Which is -- you probably won't be surprised to hear -- another reason the lottery preys on lower income people. I think we should just admit that this stuff is discriminatory -- a lot on class but at least a little on race.
      - curun1r 8y ago
        > I think a game (quoting Powerball here) where your odds are 1:292,201,338 is by definition a fleece No, it isn't. The odds from an individual ticket are irrelevant. Only the ratio of expected value to price matters when if you want to call it a fleece. The state lotteries offer many different variance options with Powerball being among the largest. And while the lottery is, in nearly all cases (there have been some exceptions), negative EV, it's not so much so that you'd call it fleecing. Remember, the original lotteries were unregulated and those selling tickets would pick the winning numbers based on the numbers that gamblers had chosen to minimize the number of payouts. That was a fleece. It wasn't until they developed a system where the winning numbers were determined by the results of horse races that there was some semblance of fairness to the system, but operators still found ways to minimize winners winninga.
      - lacker 8y ago
  - sseveran 8y ago
    I think his point was the money is not being taken from them forcibly by the state, as is the case with a tax. One could rightly argue that the state should also not be in the lottery business. In this case though there is no coercion.
    - camgunz 8y ago
      There are forms of coercion beyond force -- beyond the IRS garnishing your paycheck in this case. I really think coercion discussions are interesting. You might remember when SCOTUS was debating the constitutionality of the ACA, and essentially said everything was fine except the funded Medicaid expansion. The opinion of the court was that the subsidies were too "coercive" and that no state could reasonably decline them even if they had other good reasons for doing so (whatever they might have been... let's stipulate those good reasons exist). The reason I think coercion discussions are interesting is that they tend to reveal bias. It's fundamentally a discussion about whom you have sympathy for. If you have sympathy for lower income people who are burning their money in hopes of the slimmest chance at a better life (honestly though, more like the dopamine high of imagining a better life and escaping their stressful life for 15 seconds at a time) then you'll see the system as coercive. If you think they should wise up and not be so obviously scammed, then you'll think they get what they get. Or in the ACA case. If you have sympathy for the states who are philosophically against the welfare state and you see the Medicare subsidies as an irresistible corrupting (politically speaking, declining Medicaid subsidies when people in your state are dying from lack of medical care is a tough sell) device, then you'll see the system as coercive.
- planteen 8y ago
  I was a HOPE recipient at Georgia Tech. I took a random signals class from Mark Clements which had its basis in probability and statistics. He brought up the regressive nature of the lottery and the ethics of it: the expected value of these games is negative and in the case of scratch games, so negative that you can't even easily assign a dollar value to how bad it is. The state markets these games even though they aren't in citizens best interests. The state has given itself a monopoly on these games, so there is no competition to the poor payouts. If you look at who plays lottery games in Georgia, it's mostly lower class people transferring their wealth to middle and upper class families.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  > I don't think its fair to say that its a "tax on the poor". Someone smarter than me once said "the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math." Which has some pretty good wisdom behind it.
- mhluongo 8y ago
  It can be great for the state and a "smart move" and still be exploitative. There's a middle ground here. I used to feel the same about the lotto being a game for "consenting adults", but it's a game that the state has a monopoly on and markets primarily to the least educated and most in need of hope. That should make recipients uncomfortable.

cobookman 8y ago

Tax, "a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.". Nothing about the lotto is compulsory or based on income. I don't think its fair to say that its a "tax on the poor". This scholarship has been great for the state overall and was a smart move. Georgia Tech is now a top 5 engineering school in the us, and top 10 worldwide. UGA became a highly ranked University. The tier 3 schools became tier 2, and tier 2 schools tier 1. If it wasn't for this scholarship you'd have overall worse schools, and a brain drain on your hands.

camgunz 8y ago
Lotteries are marketed pretty directly to lower income folks, and you can tell it's working because they're the ones buying most of the tickets. They also spend a higher percentage of their income on it. This is just sort of empirically clear, like do you see lottery signs in upper middle class areas? Nope. You see them in the "poor" grocery stores (not Whole Foods), gas stations, and liquor stores. For maximum convenience, some check cashing/pay day loans have lottery booths too. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the-poor-2012-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the-poor-... > If it wasn't for this scholarship you'd have overall worse schools, and a brain drain on your hands. I mean, if you're OK with this kind of redistribution (FWIW I am too, it makes a lot of sense) then I think we should ask the richest of us to foot it, not the poorest of us.
- curun1r 8y ago
  They're marketed at that target segment to avoid the problems that came with not providing a state-sponsored version of those services. If you look back at the history of the lottery, it started out as black market, unregulated gambling that led to violence and other crime as the people running the often-fixed games fought over the right to fleece people. The modern, state-run lotteries just provide an outlet for gambling that would happen anyways.
  - camgunz 8y ago
    > If you look back at the history of the lottery, it started out as black market, unregulated gambling that led to violence and other crime as the people running the often-fixed games fought over the right to fleece people. I think a game (quoting Powerball here) where your odds are 1:292,201,338 is by definition a fleece. All that happened here is the state is reserving that right for itself, justifying it as taxing a vice. This is a common theme -- look at cigarettes and alcohol -- but in basically every case it's lower income people who are shelling out. > The modern, state-run lotteries just provide an outlet for gambling that would happen anyways. This is a common policy argument (see cigarettes/alcohol above or legalizing drugs), but does this even make sense? White collar crime is pretty rampant, so what if we legalize it and make an embezzling tax? Or human trafficking is a persistent scourge, what if we legalize it and tax it? Furthermore, these vice taxes are regressive flat taxes. If we start legalizing things and replacing the criminality with a tax, really that only opens it up to people with means. It's still ruinous for lower income people to engage with it. Which is -- you probably won't be surprised to hear -- another reason the lottery preys on lower income people. I think we should just admit that this stuff is discriminatory -- a lot on class but at least a little on race.
    - curun1r 8y ago
      > I think a game (quoting Powerball here) where your odds are 1:292,201,338 is by definition a fleece No, it isn't. The odds from an individual ticket are irrelevant. Only the ratio of expected value to price matters when if you want to call it a fleece. The state lotteries offer many different variance options with Powerball being among the largest. And while the lottery is, in nearly all cases (there have been some exceptions), negative EV, it's not so much so that you'd call it fleecing. Remember, the original lotteries were unregulated and those selling tickets would pick the winning numbers based on the numbers that gamblers had chosen to minimize the number of payouts. That was a fleece. It wasn't until they developed a system where the winning numbers were determined by the results of horse races that there was some semblance of fairness to the system, but operators still found ways to minimize winners winninga.
    - lacker 8y ago
- sseveran 8y ago
  I think his point was the money is not being taken from them forcibly by the state, as is the case with a tax. One could rightly argue that the state should also not be in the lottery business. In this case though there is no coercion.
  - camgunz 8y ago
    There are forms of coercion beyond force -- beyond the IRS garnishing your paycheck in this case. I really think coercion discussions are interesting. You might remember when SCOTUS was debating the constitutionality of the ACA, and essentially said everything was fine except the funded Medicaid expansion. The opinion of the court was that the subsidies were too "coercive" and that no state could reasonably decline them even if they had other good reasons for doing so (whatever they might have been... let's stipulate those good reasons exist). The reason I think coercion discussions are interesting is that they tend to reveal bias. It's fundamentally a discussion about whom you have sympathy for. If you have sympathy for lower income people who are burning their money in hopes of the slimmest chance at a better life (honestly though, more like the dopamine high of imagining a better life and escaping their stressful life for 15 seconds at a time) then you'll see the system as coercive. If you think they should wise up and not be so obviously scammed, then you'll think they get what they get. Or in the ACA case. If you have sympathy for the states who are philosophically against the welfare state and you see the Medicare subsidies as an irresistible corrupting (politically speaking, declining Medicaid subsidies when people in your state are dying from lack of medical care is a tough sell) device, then you'll see the system as coercive.
planteen 8y ago
I was a HOPE recipient at Georgia Tech. I took a random signals class from Mark Clements which had its basis in probability and statistics. He brought up the regressive nature of the lottery and the ethics of it: the expected value of these games is negative and in the case of scratch games, so negative that you can't even easily assign a dollar value to how bad it is. The state markets these games even though they aren't in citizens best interests. The state has given itself a monopoly on these games, so there is no competition to the poor payouts. If you look at who plays lottery games in Georgia, it's mostly lower class people transferring their wealth to middle and upper class families.
UncleEntity 8y ago
> I don't think its fair to say that its a "tax on the poor". Someone smarter than me once said "the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at math." Which has some pretty good wisdom behind it.
mhluongo 8y ago
It can be great for the state and a "smart move" and still be exploitative. There's a middle ground here. I used to feel the same about the lotto being a game for "consenting adults", but it's a game that the state has a monopoly on and markets primarily to the least educated and most in need of hope. That should make recipients uncomfortable.