I remember back in the late 80’s or early 90’s when there was a jackpot of 140 million or something, a bunch of folks were playing it and it was big news. And let me tell ya, for those who don’t know or remember, back in the 80’s and early 90’s this was world wide news. It’s a lot of money nowadays, but back then it was like a 500 million dollar jackpot now. Nowadays the Mega Millions gets up that high almost once a month, I think it’s almost 200 million now.
Anyways, to the point. I remember that some Saudi Prince came over here just to buy a few thousand tickets for this huge lotto jackpot and there was a big stink raised about it in the community from which he purchased the said tickets. Most said that they feel he shouldn’t of been allowed to buy lotto tickets, because if we went to their country and won a huge jackpot they wouldn’t let us keep it. (I’m paraphrasing BTW)
Do you think people from other countries should be allowed to play our lotto system?
Why not? Their odds of winning are as small as everybody else’s, and they donate to the receipts. It’s a win-win for everybody involved-the rich guy gets to blow his money for a good cause and the lottery fund gets fat.
Besides, why should anybody care? He still has to have the one-in-a-billion ticket to win, it’s not like he’s cheating anybody, because they aren’t going to win anyway.
State-run lotteries are terrible public policy: they prey on the hopes and misfortunes (and bad math skills) of the poorest citizens. They put the state in the position of actively lying to its citizens, by creating marketing campaigns that mislead people about their chances of winning. Lotteries are put in place by cowardly politicians who don’t have the guts to raise taxes honestly, with the cynical “justification” that they “support education.” (Do you get the idea that I don’t like lotteries?)
Lotteries are also just about the worst possible form of “gambling” from the point of view of the player. (State-run lotteries have far worse odds than the illegal mob-run numbers games they ostensibly were created to eliminate.) So it’s highly unlikely that anyone with a brain would put a lot of money in the lottery, thinking he was going to make more. You’d be far, far better off playing blackjack or even the slots.
But given that lotteries are probably not going to be eliminated, why not let foreigners pay our taxes for us, if we can find any stupid enough to want to play.
Lotteries are quite fun, as long as you treat them as just that, fun. You spend your pound or dollar and get to dream of winning millions. Spending more than one ticket’s worth, however, gives a very poor return.
You can actually make a reasonably good bet if you wait until the amount you’d win after taxes is higher than the odds of winning. So, for Powerball, that’d be about $146 million, which would probably be advertised as $300 million. And considering it still only gets that high once or twice a year, you’ve spent a total of two bucks making a +EV bet (maybe a few more if stays that high more than one drawing.) Of course, at that high a pool there’d probably be at least one split, but that’s still not too bad.
But I agree. Let those who want to play play. If the pool is big enough, they’d probably split it anyway.
Of course. The (huge) tax bill gets paid up front no matter what, and a nonresident doesn’t even cost the government much to provide services for. The government is overall even better off than if a resident wins.
One could argue that there’s not as much multiplier effect from a nonresident putting the money back into the local economy, though, but I doubt it makes much difference.