# Let's Tax Lottery Winnings at 90% **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 15, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-tax-lottery-winnings-at-90/589175 "2011-07-15T21:09:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 56
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-tax-lottery-winnings-at-90/589175/56 "2011-07-16T03:20:49Z")
[QUOTE=SenorBeef] So you’ve got a failed gotcha ya, a poor analogy, and behind it all, a desire to state the obvious that no one really disagrees with. Well done. [/QUOTE] No one? [Taxes: a scale of moral](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=615272) > [@Taxes: a scale of moral views](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taxes-a-scale-of-moral-views/588078/12): > > “I made $10 million. If I make another $1 million I’ll only keep $700 thousand. I will not would rather not have that $700 thousand so I’ll stop earning money.” > > I just have trouble believing that a businessman would have that perspective. If they did, don’t those free-market people realize that if there is $1 million to be made ($700k after taxes), that someone else will step into that void? > > If I had to pay 75% taxes for a system (infrastructure) that lets me make a million, I’d be better off than making nothing. > > I think the “work hard to pay for people who don’t” is a bit of a red herring. There are people who want to live off of society but unless someone can show me good statistics I don’t think it is significant. > > One website puts it at about 1% on welfare, about 12% get food stamps, 4% get unemployment. [Whence comes wealth?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=615853) [Why are the rich so opposed to paying taxes?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=616423) Lots of threads right now involving increasing the top marginal tax rate, and each time a conservative mentions that it will hurt investments. Each time a liberal insists that it won’t, that if a person wants more money they’ll open another store, regardless of the tax rate on their next million. Even if they don’t, someone else will. Someone else tries to explain risk, and the thread deteriorates into another bitch-fest about libertarians. So instead of talking about progressive taxes, the rich, and investments, we look at it from a different angle. Will people risk their money to play the lottery if we change the potential payout? Not the odds of winning, but the benefits derived. As you said, the odds of picking the right power ball number doesn’t change, but instead of $1million you only end up with $100,000. To that we had several people, yourself included, asking why would people play? It seemed intuitively obvious to everyone here that people wouldn’t risk $5 if the tax rate went up on their winnings, even if they’d still win $100,000 instead of $1million. Within so many of the tax threads it is eventually pointed out that the top marginal tax rate was 91% back in the 50s and everything was great. How is it that it’s so obvious that people wouldn’t buy a $5 lottery ticket if their payout changes, but yet people are completely oblivious to how million dollar investments might not happen if the potential payout shrinks. > [@SenorBeef](#): > > If your goal here is to say “see lol taxes discourage working/lottery playing!!! gotcha!”, do you really think playing the lottery and working for pay carry the same motivations and incentives? That they’re so similar that we can model them the same way? They are similar enough that people instantly realized a $5 bet with 1 in one million odds isn’t as desirable when the government takes a big chunk of your winnings. So what would happen to a $500 stock purchase, or $500,000 real estate venture, with way better odds, if the government takes a bigger chunk out of the gains? > [@SenorBeef](#): > > Well, we could just have a thread about the laffer curve if that’s what he wants. We’ve tried, it turns into the same threads as those linked above. How are people supposed to understand the laffer curve if they don’t realize that people won’t risk money if the payout changes? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-tax-lottery-winnings-at-90/589175)._