4 ms·

Take this for what its worth - there appears to be a relationship between economic downturns / recessions and lottery spend - https://taxfoundation.org/does-lot

Take this for what its worth - there appears to be a relationship between economic downturns / recessions and lottery spend - https://taxfoundation.org/does-lottery-revenue-rise-or-fall-during-economic-hardship https://taxfoundation.org/does-lottery-revenue-rise-or-fall-... Given the current sour economic forecasts and inflation concerns, I don't think the lottery spend increasing is surprising.

jacquesm 4y ago
And correlation with poverty as well. Rich people don't play the lottery.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  Is that true? I remember seeing somewhere that it’s surprisingly flat across income, though obviously a larger proportion of income for lower earners.
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  Yeah because they don’t need to and the $3 ticket isn’t a noticeable expense if they do.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  that is a distorted interpretation of assumptions it doesn't matter when rich people play the lottery, whereas it does matter when poor people play the lottery as its a meaningful proportion of their available earnings
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > Rich people don't play the lottery. They do. It's called "incorporating a company" or "investing in the stock market" often with leverage. I would guess that for a regular non-connected, non-ivy league folk the chance of becoming a billionaire is roughly the same creating a startup vs. the lottery. At that point it makes sense to play the lottery if you are a "swing for the fences" kind of guy, that's because when odds are kinda the same it makes way more sense to throw 500$ monthly in lottery tickets than throwing 14h/6d/52w yearly in precious time to build a company or reading balance sheets of publicly traded companies
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    > It's called "incorporating a company" or "investing in the stock market" often with leverage. We were discussing the lottery.
rwmj 4y ago
And very strange things like the Dance Marathons of the 1930s: https://www.historylink.org/File/5534 https://www.historylink.org/File/5534 Dance Marathons (also called Walkathons), an American phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, were human endurance contests in which couples danced almost non-stop for hundreds of hours (as long as a month or two), competing for prize money."
- tdeck 4y ago
  This was fascinating and definitely merits its own post. There are some pretty clear parallels with today's reality TV.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
We’ve got a broad and growing addiction & attention problem in America. Ad-fuelled social media, crypto, day trading and useless financial engineering. A growing fraction of the labor force, moreover, is dedicated to these cancers.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  People who learn to resist this onslaught of stimulation targeting our limited attention span will be the winners of the next few decades. I estimate that about 5% of people aged 20-30 currently have this ability.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > People who learn to resist this onslaught of stimulation targeting our limited attention span will be the winners I agree. One hopes they have a civilisation to come home to.

jacquesm 4y ago

And correlation with poverty as well. Rich people don't play the lottery.

etrautmann 4y ago
Is that true? I remember seeing somewhere that it’s surprisingly flat across income, though obviously a larger proportion of income for lower earners.
throwaway1777 4y ago
Yeah because they don’t need to and the $3 ticket isn’t a noticeable expense if they do.
yieldcrv 4y ago
that is a distorted interpretation of assumptions it doesn't matter when rich people play the lottery, whereas it does matter when poor people play the lottery as its a meaningful proportion of their available earnings
Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
> Rich people don't play the lottery. They do. It's called "incorporating a company" or "investing in the stock market" often with leverage. I would guess that for a regular non-connected, non-ivy league folk the chance of becoming a billionaire is roughly the same creating a startup vs. the lottery. At that point it makes sense to play the lottery if you are a "swing for the fences" kind of guy, that's because when odds are kinda the same it makes way more sense to throw 500$ monthly in lottery tickets than throwing 14h/6d/52w yearly in precious time to build a company or reading balance sheets of publicly traded companies
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > It's called "incorporating a company" or "investing in the stock market" often with leverage. We were discussing the lottery.

rwmj 4y ago

And very strange things like the Dance Marathons of the 1930s: https://www.historylink.org/File/5534 https://www.historylink.org/File/5534 Dance Marathons (also called Walkathons), an American phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, were human endurance contests in which couples danced almost non-stop for hundreds of hours (as long as a month or two), competing for prize money."

tdeck 4y ago
This was fascinating and definitely merits its own post. There are some pretty clear parallels with today's reality TV.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

We’ve got a broad and growing addiction & attention problem in America. Ad-fuelled social media, crypto, day trading and useless financial engineering. A growing fraction of the labor force, moreover, is dedicated to these cancers.

TechBro8615 4y ago
People who learn to resist this onslaught of stimulation targeting our limited attention span will be the winners of the next few decades. I estimate that about 5% of people aged 20-30 currently have this ability.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > People who learn to resist this onslaught of stimulation targeting our limited attention span will be the winners I agree. One hopes they have a civilisation to come home to.