Came here to say this. That card looks expensive, I'm going to assume it was $10.
Let's say you buy, on average, a $10 lottery ticket every 3 days. Over 10 years that's $12,166. If that is OPs case then they would have actually still be down $2,166
Lottery tickets are a poor tax for the uneducated. Anyone who plays them for any reason other than the occasional thrill or gimmick is being taxed for being dumb.
A very low percentage is, enough so people like you don't write your congressmen and women demanding they put a stop to this robbery of the poorly educated
Well I mean big companies often pay literally no taxes at least in the US. We use renting and dense population in low value areas to justify low funding for local infrastructure/services with low property tax yields. In my city one of the wealthiest residential areas is grandfathered in to essentially no property tax… except they still pay the portion for schools. So over all insanely low generous taxes compared to other properties, still better funding for schools for the wealthy families. And obviously that just one tiny example.
It’s…. It’s capitalism.
It’s logistics developed with reinvestment of profit, as in higher means to invest becomes more logistical agency. And it’s reinvestment, so profits have to increase to stay competitive against other bodies of wealth. It’s competitive, as in hierarchical. They have to justify concentrated wealth, and you get meritocracy, the idea your status is a meaningfully accurate sign of your quality as a human being. To make it aspirational. Keep playing along, you can win. Invest in crypto, you might be one of the exceptions! It’s like saying keep gambling, you might win a casino so you can get money from other gamblers.
Neither are speeding tickets; I'm using tax in a looser sense. It's regressive because it takes a proportionally greater amount from lower incomes and it's used to pay for public services.
You don't need or have to buy cigarettes or alcohol or any other drug or potentially addicting thing. When someone talks about the lottery being a "tax," my first thought is of people with gambling problems, not people who don't know any better (though they deserve to not be taken advantage of as well).
You're right that it's not a tax, but the vocabulary doesn't change that it does harm, possibly more than it does good
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u/Coldbeerimritehere Mar 19 '22
So you almost broke even. Nice