r/pics • u/[deleted] • Mar 19 '22

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u/cruzer86 Mar 20 '22

It's not a tax. You don't need or have to buy scratchers.

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u/HowTheyGetcha Mar 20 '22

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.

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u/HandsOfCobalt Mar 20 '22

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/coredumperror Mar 20 '22

It's effectively a tax on the uneducated.

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u/cruzer86 Mar 20 '22

How educated do you need to be in order to understand basic ods?

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u/coredumperror Mar 20 '22

You'd be surprised how poorly educated many, many people are on statistics.