Here’s my favorite part:
*He [the winners lawyer] said Pat Wales [lottery winner]bought 190 numbers for her office pool, then a few minutes later bought 20 for herself and her husband. The winning ticket, Garmey said, was among those 20. *
GREEEEAT, another workplace and more freindships ruined by the Stupid Tax.
The co-workers are at fault for not having Ms. Wales sign a document saying that in return for their money, she would share ANY of the proceeds from ANY of the tickets she purchased.
Ms. Wales, however, I feel has an obligation to pay up. Her attorney ADMITTED she took money from co-workers, and I’m sorry, you can’t just say, oh yeah, they gave me money for the lottery, but I only bought certain tickets for THEM, and it JUST SO HAPPENS the winning ticket I bought for me.
Yeah right.
What, by the way, in the unlikely event that you should win the lottery, would stop your co-workers from all getting together and testifying they gave you money towards the winning ticket, even if that were not true? Don’t give me this “conscience” or “perjury” argument.
Trust me, money changes everything.
Better yet, why don’t we JUST BAN THE LOTTERY??? It’s a ripoff, people are spending money that could be better spent elsewhere. Like that guy that spent his last money on that ticket and won. He’s a verry, very lucky man, since I think the odds are millions to one if winning. He was unemployed, ran out of unemployment (and I question how anyone could be unemployed that long with the economy the way it has been), and SPENT HIS LAST MONEY ON TICKETS!!
Now, thank God he won, but if he didn’t he would be like the many Americans that have zero savings because they waste their money on this crap.
Look, if you want to buy a ticket now and then and you have a dollar burning a hole in your pocket because its fun, that’s one thing. But for chrissakes, this Powerball shit is out of hand!
So, because you think it’s stupid, it should be banned? I agree that lotteries are pretty assinine, but they’re not morally wrong in and of themselves, and if people want to piss away their dollar bills hoping for the prize, then so be it. That’s their right. You know, land of the free and all that jazz.
If we just go around banning things willy nilly because they get some random dude’s panties in a twist, we would be in a very sad state of affairs indeed. No one is forcing you to play the lottery. You have the right to do with your dollar bills whatever you see fit, just as these doofi* do.
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*I declare the plural of “doofus” to be “doofi.”
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Another question - if playing in an office pool, is it really that difficult to make a photocopy of all the tickets bought for the group, and distribute a copy to everyone in the pool. Now everyone knows which tickets were bought, and if someone buys their own for their personal fun, the others have no say in the matter. Of course, if lottery tickets have some kind of funny anti-copying protection, this is moot.
An ounce of prevention, and all that.
As for playing the lottery, I do it periodically - for instance, when I happen to be passing through Georgia (since Alabama doesn’t have a lottery, even though that’s the issue we elected Don Siegelman on, and then the voters made an about face and voted against the lottery in a referendum - more proof that the people of Alabama are sheep guided by the pulpit). Whew, that was a long rant.
1.A contest in which tokens are distributed or sold, the winning token or tokens being secretly predetermined or ultimately selected in a random drawing.
FYI 50% of powerball proceeds go to the state to help fund (mostly) education initiatives. If there has to be a tax on the stupid, I guess it’s a good thing it’s going towards education.
In the past, whenever I bought tickets for an office pool, I would bring the tickets into the office the next day (but before the drawing) and make photocopies of them. That way, everybody who had a stake in it could get a photocopy of exactly which tickets had been purchased specifically for the office pool. Any tickets I purchaced for myself stayed in my pocket & nobody got a copy of them. This winner should have protected herself in the same way.
It’s rather tiresome to hear people keep ranting about how the lottery is a tax on stupid people, or on people with no math skills. While I’m sure some people find it clever, well, it’s not.
I am fully aware of the slim odds of winning when I do play the periodic $5 worth of tickets 3-4 times a year. However, I am in a position in which my family has enough discretionary income that we can spend it on patently silly things just for the fun of it. That’s right, I play the lottery for the fun of the chance to win - for the fun of mindlessly daydreaming about the good things I could do for friends, family, and myself. In other words, I enjoy it. And thus, I’ll spend my money on anything I happen to enjoy and derive pleasure from, so long as I’m not breaking a law, of course.
That being said, I would have no problem with banning people who receive federal or state income support from playing the lottery. I’ve no idea how we could stop them from just giving the money to a friend to buy the ticket, but that’s another issue for discussion.
That’s fine, but I’ve personally known too many people with marginal jobs that blew their not-so discretionary income on the lottery. If you can’t pay your bills, spending $20 on Powerball tickets isn’t the answer. It’s a pipedream and it’s one of the ways that the lower classes are kept happy. It’s the illusion of upward mobility on a grand scale. I pay enough in involantary taxes without financing the mansion of some lucky sod. And I detest the thought of welfare/unemployment dollars going to lottery tickets. For my dollar, I’d rather play ski-ball.
Ayup. The lottery is a tax on hope, a tax on the illusion of social mobility. It also benefits the rich tremendously: if half the lottery weren’t covering educational initiatives, guess who would be footing the bill? The poor are taxed twice for education. While this is disgusting and shameful, I cannot go so far as to question its legality.
It’s interesting to note that this problem has been around, in different variations, for ages.
There is an ancient principle that a trustee must segregate trust property from his own property.
Assuming that the winner should be considered a trustee or fiduciary, the question in my mind is whether she adequately segregated the “pool” tickets from her own.
If her (apparent) story is correct that she bought the 190 tickets in one transaction and put the tickets in an envelope, and then bought another 20 tickets on her own account; and if the lottery records bear this out (by showing a transaction for 190 tickets followed shortly by one for 20 tickets, and the winning ticket was among the 20), then it seems to me she deserves to keep the winnings.
I agree that for most people, a dollar or two, a few times a year, is well worth the fantasy of hitting it big.
On the other hand, I also agree that many people seem to overspend on lotteries and other gambling, particularly on “scratch” tickets and “daily numbers.”
Although it makes me uncomfortable to impose my values on others on this issue, I would say that on balance, governments should not be running, promoting and profiting from gambling.
I wouldn’t get rid of all gambling though. Here’s an idea: An “income tax lottery”: Ten or so tax returns are picked at random every year. The returns are audited, and if the taxpayer has been reasonably honest, he gets $1,000,000 (tax free, of course).
That’s still a hell of a lot of money. If I was her, I’d split the money, and have a clean conscience. Legally, her co-workers don’t really have a leg to stand on, though. She can keep the money all to herself . . . if that’s what would make her happy.
I don’t get why people go crazy when the pot gets really big. Like, winning five million dollars in the lottery would suck compared to one hundred million? The bigger the pot, the more players, and the higher the chance that if you win (that’s if, kids) the pot will be split amongst several winners anyway.
I don’t think the government should be in the lottery business, personally, but that’s me. I wouldn’t want to ban all lotteries either–just let well-regulated private businesses run them, and remove this charade that it’s for the benefit of the state’s schools.
People’s inability to be mature when they get a wiff of a big pot is not a matter for legislation; it’s a matter for one’s personal conscience.
Are you kidding me? How do you equate being forced to pay a percentage of your property under penalty of prison with voluntarily purchasing something at a convenience store?
“Taxed twice” indeed.
People choose to play the lottery, folks. And if they’re so poor that they can’t afford it, then they are the victims of their own stupidity, not some Evil Upper Class Conspiracy.
If people are spending their welfare checks on lottery tickets, I would view that as yet another reason why the government should not hand out money to people who don’t have enough.
Some activities are illegal, because they take advantage of human weakness, but it’s OK for the state to do them. Lotteries are one example. Another is liquor, in a state like PA. Let’s expand this principle to have the state operating brothels and selling drugs. Think of the money for schools.
Of course you view it that way. After all, you surely don’t believe that social mobility is essentially a myth, with the fringe benefit of keeping the poor who actually subscribe to this farce malleable and hard working. Please. There’s no conspiracy here. Poor people want to be self-sufficient, and luck, pluck, and decency just don’t do the trick. The fact that they believe that by dropping $20 per week on the lottery rather than pursuing the usual Protestant methods of getting rich is quite telling.
No, the lottery is obviously not the same thing as property tax. But the faint hope to become rich, which every successful person should understand, is taken advantage of and ultimately taxed. I would love to see the lottery canned and everyone’s property taxes go up. After all, nobody has a right to live in the kind of house they want.
Agree. Particularly since there are some lawyers about to get very, very rich off of this. The lawsuits will be big and expensive and drag on and on and on…
The nice thing about your imagination is that it is free!
I can daydream about being rich with out spending a dime. If that is all I have to do with my mind then I am a poor person for sure.
In my state South Carolina, we just changed the law to allow a state lottery to fund education. But first we passed a law that forbids the type of gambling we had in place. This was the video poker machine. These machines were very popular in corner stores and bars and Mom and Pop operations. Not to mention big gaming parlors. This was the only type of gambling allowed untill the lawmakers wanted to get in on the act and outlawed them so the state could have control of the gamblers money. To say you don’t want more money for education is silly, but my sate does such a poor job of educating our children that I can’t see that just thowing money at the problem will fix it. I think it needs more than that. Be that as it may, the twisted logic that gambling is a sin, heard so often when the push was on to outlaw poker machines, fell silent when the push was on to start a state lottery. The churches that condemened the machines in the local connvience store, did not speak out against the state run gambling issue. Go figure!
Of course, you also don’t get the excellent one in 80 million odds that you’ll actually get rich. I also spend the 3 minutes a day it takes to play a couple free lottos on the internet - so far I’ve won nearly $200. Not too shabby for free, eh?
Virginslayer, please e-mail me an instruction list of where I should spend my money. I’m obviously far too stupid to decide where & how to spend my own money, and only enlightened people like yourself should dictate how I do so.:rolleyes:
People like to gamble. And if the guv’ment didn’t have a lottery, cousin Vinny would be running numbers in the street. Sure, the lottery is a rip, but it’s a vice that adults should be able to participate in if they choose. Just because some poor slob is too stupid to pay his bills before he gambles is no reason to prohibit me from gambling.
Once again we have someone wanting to set the rules based on the actions of societies lesser elements.
