The irony of the people who vote conservative because "Someday I might be rich too!"

[Lyric]

For every one middle-class person who manages to move up the wealth ladder and become rich, there are thousands of them that move DOWN the ladder and become poor. The average person is infinitely more likely to benefit from welfare, Food Stamps, and/or HUD someday than they are to benefit from a lower top-bracket tax rate. And yet--they vote for people who want to utterly dismantle the social safety net--the only thing standing between them and starvation if a crisis happens and everything falls apart.

It's mind-boggling. It's like living on the Gulf Coast and choosing to buy blizzard insurance instead of flood insurance. It's like buying bulletproof glass for your car, but ripping out the seat belts and airbags. It's like raising the money to pay for your boob job by selling your kidneys.

I just don't understand how ordinary people can buy into ideas that are so obviously stupid. Even if they lack a shred of human compassion, do they not at LEAST have some rudimentary sense of self-preservation? How can anyone be THAT stubbornly clueless?

:crazy:

[Broderick]

1. That is why Lotteries are an egregious tax on the poor

Hope is a powerful tool.

[izquierdista]

2. and a sales line for swindlers

Look how many fell for it in 2008.

[Broderick]

3. The audacity of it all

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. I seriously doubt there is anybody who 'hopes' to win the lottery.

I buy tickets every week. I know full well my chance of winning is astronomical. OTOH, the $150/yr (three tickets/wk) I spend on the lottery will make NO difference in my current living conditions.

I'm in a flood and being swept downstream. I see a 2' long piece of 2x4 floating beside me. I know, logically, it will not give me enough floatation to save me.

Should I ignore it?

It's not a matter of hope - it is grasping as straws.

[Morning Dew]

12. Exactly.

I spend $104 a year (2 tickets a week) - I know my chances of winning are little better than
the chance I might find the winning ticket in the gutter.

This way the ticket won't be all muddy and I don't have to search the gutters.

It's good entertainment and 2 bucks a week won't hurt my financial situation.

[Broderick]

16. Read post 15 while you pat yourself on the back

on how smart you are. Kudos to you too! Way to go!

[Morning Dew]

18. I'm sorry the topic upsets you.

I'm sorry that you misinterpreted my mild joke about a muddy lottery ticket as patting myself on the back.

[RaleighNCDUer]

39. I literally did find a winning ticket in the gutter.

It was a scratch-off, and it won for $2.


:woohoo:

[Morning Dew]

40. Holy Moly!

That's good luck, indeed.
:woohoo:
I think I'll stick to buying them for now.

[Broderick]

15. LOL and amused by you

ok. The poor pay a substantially larger amount of their income in percentage of income on the lottery. Yep, no hope involved! you are so right. I am so wrong. They play for "fun". But nevertheless, elitism rings hallow in my circles. Like the clown the other day that said people shouldn't wait in lines at a bank because "I do this and I do that and I do this and I do that" to avoid lines at the bank. Certainly people might not have an ability to get a bank account in the first place when cashing a paycheck but they were just fine so what's the problem with the others; or in this case, perhaps some people have a dreamed up retirement plan hoping to rescue them from the mire of poverty they can't seem to crawl out of. I am so happy you are so much smarter and able to spend so much each month on entertainment and it makes no difference to your current living situation. KUDOS TO YOU!

While you bask in your own glow, do me a favor and read through this:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14945786/Lottery-Demographics


LMAO that you doubt hope has anything to do with it. It doesn't matter though when you are better than them right?


Good grief.

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. Bullshit statistics, put out by an anti-lottery group.

Want to look at the same percentages the poor pay for OTHER entertainment?

What is the percentage they spend on movies, compared to those in higher brackets?
What is the percentage they spend on cable TV?
What is the percentage they spend on internet access?
What is the percentage they spend on cell phones?

In EVERY ONE of those categories, those in lower brackets spend a far higher percentage on their incomes than do those in the higher brackets.

OTOH,

What is the percentage they spend on trips to Cabo?
What is the percentage they spend on Broadway shows?
What is the percentage they spend on Alaskan cruises?

It is pitiful that you should begrudge the lower classes their meager entertainments.

So, I spend 1.95% of my income on lottery tickets. I'm sure that if I didn't, I'd be able to afford that European vacation.

You disgust me.

[Broderick]

24. Pat yourself on the back some more about how great you are

and look at the dollars spent. It is hope passed on as a tax on the poorest. The average is virtually equal to those in higher brackets.

Look in the mirror at disgust please and take your righteousness and put it where the sun doesn't shine.

[RaleighNCDUer]

27. It is not hope - it is HOPELESSNESS.

And you know where you can put that middle-class holier than there crap.

BTW, when was YOUR last vacation?

Mine was in 2003.

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

29. Who forces them to play the lottery?

I don't play the lottery because I know it's a tax on stupidity. Should we ban lotteries and gambling because of your arguments that they disproportionately affect poor people? Hey, let's ban alcohol too. We saw how well that worked out.

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. Perhaps not. But we should acknowledge that this is a tax the poor voluntarily pay.

The poor pay their fair share into the tax system.

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

36. I never said that the poor didn't pay their fair share

So that's a straw man. I was responding to someone who said that the poor put a higher share of their income into lottery tickets and that lotteries are an egregious tax on the poor. I asked them who forced them to play the lottery? It's a fair question. I don't think that a voluntary payment can ever be considered EGREGIOUS, or even a TAX. As long as we recognize that people consciously choose to play the lottery, I don't feel bad about it. Note that this is different from things like gasoline and sales taxes, which are also regressive taxes, because the poor have no choice but to pay them. The working poor have to get to work, and until we get energy independence, they have to pay the gas taxes. Many poor people drive just as much as upper-income folks so obviously gasoline taxes are regressive. Sales taxes are also regressive because even if certain necessities like food are exempted (and not all states exempt food from sales tax), people still have to buy necessities like toiletries. The poor use just as much toilet paper or shampoo as the more well-to-do, and obviously 100 bucks means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person. If you want poor people to stop playing the lottery, then educate them that it is a stupid investment for everyone, but especially for them, because they have limited disposable income.

[lumberjack_jeff]

37. Just because it's voluntary doesn't make a less egregiously regressive tax. n/t

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

38. If something is VOLUNTARY then it is NOT a tax.

Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of a tax: a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purpose.

The gas tax is a tax because it is a tax on a purchase. The sales tax is a tax because it is a tax on a purchase. Buying a lottery ticket is not a tax because there is no tax collected on the lottery ticket. In essence, it is a voluntary donation to government, no different than deciding to send your state treasury a little more than you owe. In addition, by buying the ticket, you are buying a chance to win a pool of money, a chance that is unavailable to those who do not participate. This is different from gasoline taxes that are paid by everyone, and everyone is allowed to use the roads.

You're a nanny-stater. You have a problem with people spending their own money in the way that they see fit. You already said that you don't support eliminating the lottery or preventing the poor from gambling at casinos, so what exactly is your point? You say it's a tax. I prove to you that it isn't. You respond by saying that it's egregiously regressive. Regressive taxes are unavoidable. Gas taxes and sales taxes are regressive because the poor have less ability to pay these taxes. No one drags a poor person to the convenience store and demands that they buy a ticket.

[lumberjack_jeff]

42. I voluntarily pay a tax every time I accept a paycheck or fill up my car.

Lottery tickets are a tax on people that suck at math. It targets people who need the help of government, not its exploitation.

[RaleighNCDUer]

45. No, you do not.

If you want the gas, you MUST pay the tax. If you NEED the gay, you must pay the tax. There is nothing voluntary about it. There is no getting gas without the gas tax, other than stealing it.

The IRS and the feds are never going to come after you for not buying a lottery ticket.

No wonder the Tea Party exists - the country abounds with people who don't know the meaning of the word 'tax'.

[RKP5637]

4. They are literally bred in this society to be ignorant and damn proud of it... n/t

[HereSince1628]

5. I hear this reason given often but I am suspicious of it's credibility

It sounds too much like a statement by Mark Twain before there was a federal income tax.

I suspect this oft repeated phrase has become a convenient meme that can be discussed in polite company that covers darker issues.

To wit, I suspect it's about how people struggle to not be the bottom rung on the economic ladder rather than it is a desire to preserve benefits for their doubtful arrival at the top rung.

Denying social programs to ____________ (fill in despised group name) and keeping them poor, sickly, uneducated, and homeless insures that it's __________ on the bottom.

[CTyankee]

6. Some have to learn the hard way. Here's a real life example:

My mechanic's son was working in his dad's shop as a 19 year old kid, learning how to service/fix cars. He was going to community college part time to become an electrical engineer. He said he didn't want more taxes on the rich because he figured he'd be rich someday (his very words). Flash forward ten years. Now he's pushing 30, still in his dad's shop, hasn't been able to finish that degree because he doesn't have the tuition money. Now he's got a kid of his own and she needs health care. He has to depend on CT's Husky program for it. His sister has 4 kids and is also on that program, plus food stamps. If she works too many hours she loses benefits. They both saw their own mother die in her early 50s from cancer, which spread because there was no preventive health care insurance. Neither one of them has married the partners that produced the children.

I hear this "kid" now tell me we need universal health care. All his spoutings about not taxing wealthy people are no longer heard. He works hard every day but he still needs the state of CT to take care of his kid and his sister's kids. Now things are different.

This is a real life example of what happens to some people who bought the "someday I'll be rich" crap.

I feel sorry for this guy and the whole family, whom I have known now for 10 years. I don't feel smug about being right because it is just too sad. The one thing I'm glad about is the fact that he does know a lot about fixing cars and will always have a job, even if he is scraping along. Of course, it is not the job he really wanted, nor did he expect that he would be "stuck" with no real hope of getting strong foothold in the middle class.

[NNN0LHI]

7. Had some guy screaming about the "Death Tax", one day at a restaurant

I know this guy. He is dirt poor. Everyone in his family is dirt poor. And this guy was worried to death that some millionaires kids might have to pay some taxes on their inheritance.

Go, figure?

Don

[Lyric]

20. Yep, exactly.

It kills me. I just can't understand how people can be so willfully blind to the obvious truth.

:banghead:

[treestar]

8. They feel very safely in the middle class

They still have a job. They don't believe it could really happen to them - an illness or layoff. They also believe that if they cannot find a job, they will just make one.

It gives them an illusion of control.

[RKP5637]

9. And on top of that many of them are delusional. They believe in

wish fulfillment and it's the other guy's fault that guy can't get a job. Nothing brings one to reality faster than a smart smack in the nose when suddenly it's their turn and they wonder WTF. I've known many people at work to suddenly become die-hard democrats when they got laid off, and no job, hired, laid off again, and no job, on and on, then too old, over 50, etc. No health care and wondering where all the programs are ...

[treestar]

17. They really want to believe it is the other guy's fault he

has no job - if that is so, then they don't have to worry themselves, because of course they would never do whatever the other guy did wrong. But watch what happens when they find out it can - suddenly they expect help and don't have such bootstraps as they thought they did.

Another favorite of mine is when they say if you can't find a job, just move to where the jobs are. Just move to North Dakota! Like they would really do that if it came down to them.

[unblock]

11. a strong safety net hugely benefits the rich

first, the rich benefit because they can take tremendous risks with their careers and fortunes knowing that the safety net applies to them, too, and that they won't starve even if every business venture they're involved in collapses. this is not a trivial consideration for entrepreneurs and small businesspeople who might go deep into debt to finance their dream.

second, a strong safety net means a lot of money in the hands of people who are quite likely to spend virtually all of it. this is known as "low hanging fruit" in the business community. the only hard part is, gosh darn it, they have to engage in some sort of commerce to extract this wealth. still, this is vastly easier than getting money out of rich people!

[Claudia Jones]

46. correct

Your insight here is very valuable. Capitalism destroys that which it depends upon. Every capitalist must drive down wages. If they don't, their competition will and so gain the advantage while those who do not will be driven out of business. Every capitalist must evade taxes and regulations. If they don't, their competition will and so gain the advantage while those who do not will be driven out of business. This process destroys the basis for capitalism, which cannot survive without the protection and support of the government the capitalists are destroying and without the consumers the capitalists are preying upon. This is the mechanism by which the very things essential to the survival of capitalism are destroyed by capitalism. This would not be such a problem were it not for the fact that the environment and all of us are destroyed in the process.

Riddle: what is the one thing that every capitalist fears even more than they fear organized labor and the political left?

Answer: another capitalist.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. "It's like raising the money to pay for your boob job by selling your kidneys"

If I had bigger boobs I could afford to buy new kidneys and then some.

Call it an investment.

:P

[demigoddess]

14. Rush limbaugh spent years getting people to believe this

he spent years saying that taxing the rich would affect them, that being middle class is being rich, and that being poor is not a bad thing. They spent ages on shows talking about how 'I grew up poor and it didn't hurt me, I worked harder and became successful'. It was very interesting because so many calls talked about growing up poor and when they mentioned their parents income, it was pretty middle class for the time, even well off. You also have to remember that some of the calls are made by professional callers (actors). But I remember one caller, a family of four living on 10 thousand a year, where they did not want Bill Clinton elected because they would be taxed when Clinton 'soaked the rich'.

[ck4829]

19. Time for reality: You Are NOT Going To Get Rich When Wealth Is Getting Concentrated Into Fewer Hands

What don't people understand about that?

[BeFree]

22. How so clueless? HATE

They hate everyone, including themselves.

[Mendocino]

23. Useful idiots

the rich just love em!

[Claudia Jones]

25. very few do

I think that very few people fit the profile you describe here. The right wing wants us to believe this, yes. But is is a myth.

[Bigmack]

26. Steinbeck...

[NOMOREDRUGWAR]

28. There aren't enough rich people who vote Republican, so they cater to white evangelicals.

There aren't enough rich people in this country for Republicans to win elections. Let's look at the exit polls from 2004, a more typical election year than 2008 because it was a closer election and the economy wasn't going into the crapper. According to national exit polls, in 2004 Bush won 56% of the votes of those making $50k per year, and these people comprised 55% of the electorate. Bush also won 44% of the votes of those making less than $50k per year, and these people comprised 45% of the electorate. Further breakdowns indicate that Bush won 56% of those voters making between $50k and $75k, and these voters comprised 23% of the electorate.<p>

So Bush needs more than the top 25% or top 30% to win. He needs some more votes, and he gets these votes from white evangelicals. This should be no clue to everyone, but keep this fact in mind: White evangelicals were 23% of the voters in 2004, and they gave 78% of their votes to Bush. Of the remaining 77% of voters that did not identify as white evangelicals, Bush only won 43% of their votes, with Kerry winning 56%.

In 2008, white evangelicals comprised a HIGHER percentage of the electorate than they did in 2004. In 2004 white evangelicals were only 23% of the electorate, but they were 26% of the electorate in 2008. McCain won 74% of the white evangelical vote, so he did a little bit worse than Bush. Of the remaining 74% of voters that did not identify as white evangelicals, however, McCain only won 36% of their votes, with Obama winning 63%.

White evangelicals tend to be poorer and less educated than the average voter, and thus more susceptible to campaign talk about stopping GHEY marriage, etc. Republicans use and abuse these people year after year, and these voters never get what they want, but it doesn't matter to them. Their god told them to vote Republican.

[hifiguy]

35. Nothing is as effective at hiding the ball of reality

than reichwing evangelical Xtianity. I can't imagine how effing dumb you have to be to buy into it. I really can't. But then I have always based my approach to life on logic and reason.

[samsingh]

30. they're fools supporting their masters.

[Remember Me]

31. that's far too pat and smug an analysis and doesn't ring true

There may be SOME truth in it, but I for sure don't see it.

What we're dealing with is the authoritarian mindset -- people who are either authoritarians themselves (in their own homes or perhaps small businesses -- do as I say, not as I do), or who WOULD be given the chance. But they've been raised from birth to honor and respect authority, and unlike most of us, to never, ever question it. Just follow blindly, unquestioningly. That's what buys happiness, and a controllable, livable life: following the rules. And enough times, they can work their way up to those sub-authority positions and participate in the glory.

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. ...more likely to benefit from welfare, Food Stamps, and/or HUD ...than a lower top tax rate.

+1

[hifiguy]

34. People that stupid and in that much denial

about their actual condition in life simply can't be reasoned with. It is not worth the time and effort to do so. Ignorance can be cured. That kind of stupid goes all the way to the bone. They deserve what they get in life. How they put their shoes and socks on every day is some kind of minor miracle.

I buy a couple of lottery tickets when the money gets crazy big but that's only three or four times a year. And my politics certainly aren't based on the one-in-a-zillion hope of striking it rich. Which is why I am a left wing Social Democrat.

[KamaAina]

41. Well, I might be rich too, someday

but if I were, I sure as hell wouldn't suddenly turn into a repuke. I'd try to be more like George Soros Jr. :-)

[JI7]

43. it's not just that, but also a lot of people who work hard think it's the Poor who are hurting them

and if the govt didn't have programs for the poor these people would be making more money.

it's a lot of things which mostly go back to the Reagan days.

there is also the thing about being ashamed to need help like food stamps. while nothing is said about those who get huge subsidies, and other welfare for the wealthy .

but the thing is the wealthy that we want to tax and pay their fair share will be well off no matter what. maybe some CEO's might get a couple million less but they still have tens of millions. is that going to hurt their lifestyle ?

people just don't have perspective . a good sense of how big/small the numbers are.

again, it all goes back to the Reagan Days.

[B Calm]

44. I think it's called Battered Person Syndrome. .