It serms incredible to me to give over a billion dollars to a random person.
Not really.
The lottery is paid for by those who all have an equal chance of winning that prize. Also, the profits from lotteries are usually spent on social funds etc.
I feel more conflicted about thr fact that it preys on addiction and those who buy the most lottery tickets are often those who can least afford them. I find that much more grotesque than a random person getting very lucky, but to each their own.
In the US, close to half of the winnings do go to the lottery, plus a portion of each lottery ticket usually goes to fund some government agency. Schools, programs for the impoverished and disenfranchised, etc.
The real question, in my opinion, is if you are willing to spend that much money on a ticket, why aren’t you willing to spend that much money on just outright funding government programs? Imagine if 100% of what someone paid for a ticket went to programs for the disenfranchised? That could make real difference.
I spend about $10 per year on lottery tickets. I pay upwards of $40k in taxes, much of which is funneled to “disenfranchised”. I’m good, thanks.
That depends on the government in question. For example, the Canadian government does not have a claim on any kind of lottery or game show winnings.
It’s grotesque for ANYONE to have a billion dollars. Arguably the lottery winner is the only one to achieve that wealth by even sort-of ethical means.
By that measure, playing the stock exchange is just an advanced version of lottery.
It is, except for the way that money is derived from the labour of the workers, and the fact that you’re not likely to make lifestyle changing amounts of money without already having a significant amount of money to gamble in the first place.
Not to mention the system is arguably much more “rigged” thanks to the major players in the scene, when you buy a lottery ticket you aren’t competing against giant corporations that spend millions on figuring out the best way to buy lottery tickets.
there are people who have over a billion dollars worth of positive impact on the world.
There certainly have been such people. But none were ever billionaires. Such people do something which creates great value. Billionaires are parasites who do nothing but siphon value away from society.
Albert Einstein, Nikolai Vavilov, Marie Curie, Martin Luther King Jr, Alan Turing, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Faraday, Nelson Mandela, Isaac Newton, Edward Jenner, Harriet Tubman, Louis Pasteur, etc.
State lotteries are in effect a tax on the uneducated; largely used to fund education.
But part of the reason they exist is that, in their absence, people spontaneously come up with even worse forms of gambling, like the old numbers game that funds the expansion of organized crime.
Most lottery players, especially scratch-ticket players, would be better off sticking that money under their mattresses or in credit-union accounts. However, again, when there are no gambling games around, people spontaneously invent them; abolishing state lotteries would not cause that money to go under mattresses or into credit unions.
largely used to fund education
Alas, nope.
Many states have laws saying that for every lottery dollar that goes to education, a dollar comes out of the education budget. Usually lottery profits end up in a general fund, the whole education thing is a legislated smoke screen.
The main function of state run lotteries is to take money away from organized criminals and give it to elected criminals instead.
Most states, there’s this association that it supports education, but there’s this bizarre scheme where for every lottery dollar that goes into the education budget, $1 from the education budget comes back out into the general fund.
So you end up just robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of thing. It doesn’t actually add additional money to these causes that lotteries market themselves as helping.
a majority of the 42 states that run lotteries claim the games increase funding for education. But a CBS News investigation has found that most of the lottery sales never make it to a classroom.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-lottery-shortchanging-schools/
But when you take away the amount shelled out for prizes (60% on ticket sales) and the cut to the lottery dealers, along with fees and operating expenses, it leaves about one third of the handle ($3.37 billion) for “aid to education”.
Moreover, NYS Assemblyman David DiPietro (R-147th District) claims the money is not always used for education expenses, at least not in the traditional sense.
According to DiPietro, the money on occasion has been “pinched off” by the state, to pay for a variety of items, including attorney’s fees for construction projects and even to pave roads near schools.
Any gambling that isn’t regularly audited and controlled by the state. I work in the casino industry, I have sets of reports and evidence I have to run and provide to the state daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Then every two years they get a room in our building to full audit everything again end comb through everything we do to make sure we comply with all of the hundreds of controls across the 25 chapters in our gaming control book. Anything not subjected to and complying with that is illegal.
Wait til you find out about inheritance
It is a deep and philosophical question that must be looked at from all sides. But after much debate and consideration among our greatest scholars the universal truth is a question in of itself. Am I the random person?
