# Ah, poor baby. Win $34 million and your poor widdle life goes to crap **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 5, 2005, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177 "2005-12-05T15:25:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/61 "2005-12-07T01:40:30Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > The guy was an alcoholic. Alcoholics drink themselves to death everyday. > > As far as being sensible when you strike it rich? Maybe you should watch The Treasure of the Sierra Madre sometime. Yes, I’m sure they do. But my thread here isn’t about “alcoholic drinks self to death.” It’s about “idiot wins $34 million, blows it all.” If you’ve lost someone to alcoholism, perhaps this thread is too personal for you. I’m not letting this guy off the hook for being an idiot and blowing $34 million, just because he was an alcoholic, and now he’s dead. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/62 "2005-12-07T02:07:47Z")
Neither one of them ‘blew it all’. Both purchased substatial homes. His did decline in value but I guess he should have done a few quick renovations and flipped the house a month later. I haven’t lost anyone to chemical dependency but that doesn’t mean I going to kick people when they are down. Really down as the case maybe. Where does it say that people who win the lottery had better live great lives afterwards? BTW I know what you’re getting for Christmas A visit from three spirits. Expect the first one when the clock strikes one! ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/63 "2005-12-07T02:18:32Z")
Many people who win the lottery end up fucked up. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/64 "2005-12-07T02:24:28Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > Many people who win the lottery end up fucked up. Do they? I wonder what the percentage is, especially when compared to how they were before the won? ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/65 "2005-12-07T02:31:10Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > BTW I know what you’re getting for Christmas > > A visit from three spirits. Expect the first one when the clock strikes one! Again??? Damnit! Those assholes show up at my place every year! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/66 "2005-12-07T03:04:37Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Yes, I’m sure they do. But my thread here isn’t about “alcoholic drinks self to death.” It’s about “idiot wins $34 million, blows it all.” But it IS a thread about an alcoholic who drinks himself to death. It was the $34 million that made is possible for him to do it in record time, that’s all. That fact that you fail to see that shows a pretty glaring lack of compassion. Yeah, he blew a lot of money, but he was a seriously messed up person whose limited little life propped him up. Without those limits, he died. How can you not feel sorry for that? Because you wish you had the money? Sure, who doesn’t, but he’s still more to be pitied than scorned. > [@](#): > > If you’ve lost someone to alcoholism, perhaps this thread is too personal for you. I’m not letting this guy off the hook for being an idiot and blowing $34 million, just because he was an alcoholic, and now he’s dead. If an idiot wins the lottery, what else CAN he do but blow it? It’s a tragedy that he won at all, is my reading of it. You should have won it instead, clearly. That didn’t happen, and this man and woman died pathetically, suffering. I feel bad for them. It’s a “be careful what you wish for”/monkey’s paw type story. I can’t find a way to heap mockery on these people. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/67 "2005-12-07T05:12:51Z")
Regarding the “it’s a voluntary tax” vs. “it’s entertainment” debate, I’ve always seen the lottery as serving a different purpose. They’re selling something incredibly valuable: They sell _hope_, for a dollar a day. It’s not “entertainment” in the sense that a movie ticket is a purchase of entertainment; people don’t buy lottery tickets because they enjoy scratching off that silver stuff\*. People buy lottery tickets because they want to win a lot of money and not have to work anymore. They KNOW, just as we all know, that they’re more far likely to die of hypothermia than they are to hit the lottery, but they play anyway, because _winning isn’t really the point_; the point is that having a lottery ticket in your pocket lets you dream about your new life, and what you’d do with “all that money,” and what kind of car you’d buy, and where you’d go buy a home entertainment system, and (my personal favorite) the spectacular and glorious way in which you would quit your goddam job. In a way, the lottery is popular for the same reason that Christianity is popular; they both offer the hope of a better life to come, one that will let you get away from this world’s drudgery and traffic jams and government cheese and rent payments. _That_ idea is at the heart of it, simple and alluring, and that’s why people keep playing after months or years of getting no return whatsoever. - Granted, compulsive gamblers appear to be acting on a different urge; I don’t claim to understand gambling addicts. ---
**Author:** ![MelCthefirst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eada6e/32.png) [@MelCthefirst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MelCthefirst)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/68 "2005-12-07T05:19:01Z")
I dunno - take away your reason for working, studying, finding a career path, filling your day and mixing with people at work, what are you left with? How many of your friends would you be able to hang out with during the week? Everyone else would be doing something that you no longer need to do. I’m not convinced most of us would handle it well. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/69 "2005-12-07T22:48:52Z")
> [@MelCthefirst](#): > > I dunno - take away your reason for working, studying, finding a career path, filling your day and mixing with people at work, what are you left with? How many of your friends would you be able to hang out with during the week? Everyone else would be doing something that you no longer need to do. I’m not convinced most of us would handle it well. Me neither. What winning the lottery would do for a lot of us working poor folk would give us _choices._ Unfortunately, a lot of us would make spectacularly bad choices, like drinking ourselves to death or wasting all the money. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/70 "2005-12-07T23:01:42Z")
Adding to the whole expected value calculation - I haven’t done the numbers myself, but I’ve read that if you have to drive more than 2 miles to the convenience store, your odds of being killed in a car accident getting there exceed your odds of winning the lottery. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/71 "2005-12-08T05:15:35Z")
> [@MelCthefirst](#): > > I dunno - take away your reason for working, studying, finding a career path, filling your day and mixing with people at work, what are you left with? How many of your friends would you be able to hang out with during the week? Everyone else would be doing something that you no longer need to do. I’m not convinced most of us would handle it well. Do lotto winners ever get any kind of counseling? Or even maybe just a meeting with an advisor of some kind? It seems kinda irresponsible, given all the stories, to just hand someone a check for millions of dollars and then turn 'em loose on the world. Seems like people from really wealthy families, people who don’t have to work for a living, always seem to have something meaningful to occupy the normal working hours. I wouldn’t do well as “idle rich.” There’d have to be some project I could donate my time to, if nothing else. Just sitting home all day drinking would get pretty old, pretty quick, I’d think. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/72 "2005-12-08T07:37:33Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > I know people who only play the lottery when the pot is above a certain size, based on the expected value argument. The problem with discussing expected value in the context of the lottery is the fact that winning is such a rare event as to make statistical arguments irrelevant. Knowing the expected value of **JSexton** ’s marbles in a bag game is useful precisely because one can conceivably play enough times to allow for a statistically meaningful outcome. If the white marble pays $2, you _will_ lose money in the long run, whereas if it pays $15 you _will_ win money. No one can play the lottery enough to generate the statistics needed to make the expected value relevant. It’s no smarter to pay a dollar for a 1 in 100 million chance to win 500 million dollars than it is to pay a dollar for a 1 in a million chance to win 80 million. This is why I wait until the prize gets big and then by 5 tickets all with the same numbers. The probability of winning is close to zero so if I buy 5 tickets with different numbers I’ve multiplied a number that’s nearly zero by 5 which is still nearly zero. By buying 5 all with the same number I have a good probability that if my number does come up I’ll get the lion’s share of the pot if there are other winners thus pissing them off royally. And if there are no other winners then I’ve wasted $4. Big deal. ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/73 "2005-12-08T08:30:17Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Just sitting home all day drinking would get pretty old, pretty quick, I’d think. Not for an alcoholic. Again, you keep coming back again and again to the deep flaws which made his entire existence one of barely hanging on and then killed him quickly once he had the means. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/74 "2005-12-08T13:27:32Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > This is why I wait until the prize gets big and then by 5 tickets all with the same numbers. The probability of winning is close to zero so if I buy 5 tickets with different numbers I’ve multiplied a number that’s nearly zero by 5 which is still nearly zero. > > By buying 5 all with the same number I have a good probability that if my number does come up I’ll get the lion’s share of the pot if there are other winners thus pissing them off royally. And if there are no other winners then I’ve wasted $4. Big deal. But… 1. By doing this you have ensured that it costs you $5 to pay the lottery, and thus depressed the odds to the point at which you’re no longer in positive-expectation territory. 2. Game theory states that whatever conclusion you reach, you must logically assume your opponent also reaches; hence everyone else is plunking down five bucks as well, and pisses you off royally in return. Two reasons why your cunning plan doesn’t work. (For a rate of return like a lottery prize, you can ignore the mathematics; if you’re smart enough to spend only what you can easily spare - because spending more does not meaningfully alter the chance that you will win over the 3000-odd tries you could have in your life - then the potential change in your quality of life, in the unlikely event you win, far outweighs the money you will never miss.) ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/75 "2005-12-08T21:52:28Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > This is why I wait until the prize gets big and then by 5 tickets all with the same numbers. The probability of winning is close to zero so if I buy 5 tickets with different numbers I’ve multiplied a number that’s nearly zero by 5 which is still nearly zero. > > By buying 5 all with the same number I have a good probability that if my number does come up I’ll get the lion’s share of the pot if there are other winners thus pissing them off royally. And if there are no other winners then I’ve wasted $4. Big deal. I really hope you’re joking. This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/76 "2005-12-08T22:15:53Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > I know people who only play the lottery when the pot is above a certain size, based on the expected value argument. . . . No one can play the lottery enough to generate the statistics needed to make the expected value relevant. I can if I win the lottery. Hah! ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/77 "2005-12-08T22:53:01Z")
I know a man who has won the lottery _twice_. Not huge wins, but $2 and $4.5 million. Guess what he did? Well, he paid off his mortgage, and his car load. He established college funds for each of his children. He took the wife on a nice cruise each time… And that’s it. All the rest went into investments managed by a couple of pros. IOW, he’s still working the (decent but not thrilling) job he had to begin with, living in the same house, driving the same kind of car. And he’s perfectly happy about it all, because he LIKES his job, the people he works with, the neighbors and so forth. What he says is that the wins bought him permanent freedom from having to worry about anything that money can solve. Smart guy. ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/78 "2005-12-08T23:02:14Z")
> [@UncleBeer](#): > > I can if I win the lottery. Hah! Touché. ---
**Author:** ![JSexton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/79 "2005-12-09T00:02:18Z")
> [@StarvingButStrong](#): > > I know a man who has won the lottery _twice_. Not huge wins, but $2 and $4.5 million. And therein lies an irony. I only play when the prize is huge. Honestly, though, I would almost rather win an amount around 5 million than some ridiculous sum like 300 million. 5 mil ensures that I don’t have to worry about money, by generating a decent income off of interest. 300 mil makes me feel like I need to try and save the world. At lower levels, I feel like I can actually say ‘no’ to people who come looking for handouts. With nigh-infinite funds, how can I possibly ever say no to anyone again? For that matter, could I ever trust someone I just met ever again in my life? Would I always wonder if they were only interested in my money? ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177/80 "2005-12-09T01:00:25Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > Where does it say that people who win the lottery had better live great lives afterwards? In all of our fantasies about “if I won the lottery”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-poor-baby-win-34-million-and-your-poor-widdle-life-goes-to-crap/334177.md?page=5)