40 years later: Lottery pays off for state. Has it for you?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

EVERETT — Lordy, lordy! Washington’s Lottery is 40.

The lottery is celebrating with a “Scratch from the Past” ticket with a top prize of $50,000, which in 1982 would have bought five new cars with quarters left over to play hours of that hot new game, Ms. Pac-Man.

Gambling has paid off for Washington’s Lottery. The past four decades have resulted in more than $17.7 billion in sales, $10.5 billion in prizes awarded and $2.4 billion for educational causes.

“Scratch from the Past” will set you back $5, which 40 years ago was equivalent to about $1.70.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/40-years-later-lottery-pays-off-for-state-has-it-for-you/

[RainCaster]

1. Give us the lottery and we will never need another school levy

Remember that promise? I do. Still waiting for that to happen.

[Chainfire]

3. Indeed I remember the promise.

It wasn't a year later that our Florida leadership cut the original funding systems and used the money for more important things like business development. It was a sham from the word go. A way to tax the poor and ignorant while giving breaks to the rich.

I will never forget the day that I was in the convenience story for morning coffee and a woman came in with her last dollar to buy a lottery ticket hoping that she would win enough to put gas in her car to go to work. She left crying.

[lastlib]

2. Tax on bad math skills.....

Anybody playing a lottery might just as well light a match to their money, because the odds against them are just too great.

[Chainfire]

4. It is the state preying on those who do not understand the odds.

I worked at a small business with about 30 employees. The office manager suggested that we all chip in ten dollars a week to buy numbers for the big drawings, on the theory that we were bound to win in short order. I went to my office and calculated that we would have had somethin like a 50/50 chance of winning in five hundred years or so. When she was confronted with the numbers, it just pissed her off, like I was the big spoil-sport. She reminded me how I would feel when they all struck it rich. They tried it for a few months before people lost interest in spending their beer money.

I have no moral objections to gambling, for years I played in a small stakes poker game weekly. However, when it came my turn, I got to shuffle and deal, and at the end I got to see the winning hand, and knew where my money went. It was all for fun, no one was allowed to lose over twenty bucks. The State, on the other hand, knows exactly what they are doing and who they are doing it to, what the consequences are for families that can't afford to lose; it is immoral.