Too Many Americans Want Fickle Luck Instead Of Honest Labor

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Gambing began to sweep America at exactly the same time our currency collapsed in 1972. Every year, as our entire culture goes deeper into the red, gambling has spread like the cancer it really is. Now it infests all levels of our culture. Tonight, there is lottery madness as people dream of becoming like that dead Playboy Bunny who got filthy rich and then destroyed herself and her family.

The con artists running our gambling governments found that people would rather try for a 'big' one than the much better chances of winning smaller amounts.

BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. lottery players rushed for ticket machines across the country Tuesday as a jackpot of the multistate Mega Millions game was estimated at a record 355 million U.S. dollars, media reported Wednesday.

New Yorkers were buying more than one million tickets an hour, said Robert McLaughlin, the state's lottery director. Virginia retailers were selling about 8,550 tickets per minute as Tuesday night's drawing approached.

"The fever is definitely hot and heavy now," said Sheila Hill-Christian, lottery director in Virginia.

As each person buys a ticket, the odds get worse and worse. The pot grows to demented size and the chances of winning become ridiculously small. I live in a supposedly 'Christian' community. Many people pride themselves on being good and sober citizens. But many of them also gamble. And every year, the place looks worse and worse for it. As global trade decimates our factories, as industrial farming kills our small farms, everyone goes to the local Stewart's and buys endless lottery tickets.

There is a whole wall of them by the cashiers, thousands of stupid lotto tickets of unimaginable variety and odds. And when I wait in line, it is because the store is really a betting parlor and it looks it; shabbier and shabbier each year.

This demoralization of our culture is dire. It is directly connected with our inability to pay taxes and to save. We all pray our nation hits some lottery---when we invaded Iraq, I heard many people laugh with joy, 'We can now get all that oil cheap!' they cried foolishly.

Click here for a Canadian anti-gambling site:

By ANDRÉ PICARD
PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTER
Thursday, January 6, 2005 - Page A17

One of the most pervasive fantasies of Canadians is hitting the jackpot -- a financial windfall from winning the lottery, or striking it rich at the casino or the video lottery terminal in the neighbourhood bar.

It is a costly fantasy.

Revenues from government-run gambling operations exceeded $11.8-billion in 2003. That is a four-fold increase in just a decade. (And, to put that number in perspective, consider that the goods and services tax, the dreaded GST, brings in about $29-billion a year.)

The health and social costs of gambling -- and problem gambling in particular -- are a lot more difficult to quantify. But they include increased costs for policing, courts, prisons, medical care, social assistance and economic losses to individuals and businesses.

The havoc wreaked on communities and the undermining of our redistributive taxation system -- one of the single greatest benefits to the health of Canadians -- is rarely discussed.

The devastation, in terms of lives lost and families destroyed, is incalculable. Where there is gambling, there is increased violence, including higher rates of child abuse and domestic violence.

Every year at Christmas, our TV stations like to play the Jimmy Stewart movie, It's a Wonderful Life. The Angel shows poor Jimmy the fate of his dear home town in the future: gambling and degraded people take over! Sort of like America today, actually. Our inner cities, dangerous or dying except New York City and San Francisco.

Bit by bit, the pool hall and race track mentality takes over. The card sharp works with the tax man to fleece the foolish. And the people most addicted are the poor and the ill-educated.

And the government makes out like a bandit, of course.

The Lottery is required to report and withhold taxes according to the regulations of the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State Department of Tax and Finance.

The current tax withholding rates are:
Required Federal withholding 25%
Federal backup withholding 28%
Federal Non-resident Alien withholding 30%
New York State withholding 6.85%
New York City withholding 3.648%
Yonkers withholding .685%

Legislation was passed that requires the New York Lottery to withhold New York State taxes from taxable prizes over $5,000, regardless of the winner's place of residence. This law became effective October 1, 2000 and can be viewed at www.tax.state.ny.us By law, the New York Lottery is required to withhold past-due child support and prior public assistance received from any Lottery prize of $600 or more.

This is a very regressive tax. A rich person can afford to waste $50 to $100 a month, a poor man can't. But the sense of hopelessness is pervasive. Surrounded by advertisements and movies and TV shows displaying a better life, many dream of fancy cars, fancy women, fancy clothes. Despite seeing poor people go insane in the lap of excessive wealth, they don't care: they want to be the fabulous Playboy Bunny who lives it up and dies at 40 of her excesses!

The gambling mania is very much connected to the sense of despair and fear that grips us as we overspend and drive ourselves deeper and deeper into debt.

by Alicia Hansen and Gerald Prante

Saving for retirement is a daunting prospect for many people, one that can make get-rich-quick options seem more attractive than slow and steady saving, investing, and planning. A recent survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Planning Association, reported in a MarketWatch article, found that Americans are, for the most part, pessimistic about their ability to save for retirement—so pessimistic, in fact, that 21 percent of respondents said playing the lottery is “the most practical strategy for accumulating several hundred thousand dollars” for retirement.

The results of this study are not surprising, given that in Fiscal Year 2002, the average American spent more on lotteries than on reading materials or attending movies, and in Fiscal Year 2004, the average American spent $184 on the lottery (this figure includes video lottery terminals). If lottery players instead invested this money, they would have a head start on preparing for retirement. Few lottery players beat the long odds (less than one in 146 million for the Powerball grand prize1) and win enough money for retirement, and lotteries, on average, return only 53 cents on the dollar2. For the average investor, over a forty-year period, the stock market returns 811 percent more than the lottery.

As Table 1 shows, a person who spends $100 per month on the lottery—slightly less than the average resident of Rhode Island spends on the lottery (see Table 2)—over a forty-year period would be $144,000 richer if he instead invested that money. A lottery player who spends $50 per month—slightly less than the average resident of Massachusetts—would have an additional $72,201 if he instead invested his money, and the average New Yorker, who spends about $25 a month on the lottery, could be over $36,000 richer by retirement age if he instead invested in the stock market.

A return that is actually a reduction: this is the American economy. We are told over and over again, our nation is rich because people are willing to lend us money if we sign over everything we own.

Gah. The power of thrift can't be hammered enough! Conservative means to save! Not go into debt! And Liberal means to share, not gamble. I have known young people who can't get their act together because they expect to inherit great wealth. I have know multimillionaires who, upon winning lifes' biggest lottery: the death of daddy, go bankrupt in less than five years.

Losing money is easy. Earning it is hard. But the mind that presses onwards and earns is the same one that maintains the home, runs the community and builds the nation.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Comments

[JSmith]

Lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math.

[JSmith]

"The power of thrift can't be hammered enough! Conservative means to save! Not go into debt!"

Remember the old line "Jesus saves - Moses invests"? My wife and I are net savers - we just don't have any expensive hobbies - and have the house and cars paid for. Current debt in our household is about $180.00 on a mastercard.

Debt comes in several flavors, not all equally pernicious. Taking out a mortgage is the only way 99.999% of people (myself included) can buy a house - who do you know who has $100K, $200K, $300K in cash? I could sell some assets and come up with a decent amount of cash now, but 20 years ago I couldn't. So we took out a mortgage.

Credit card debt, on the other hand, does no one any good - which is why we use our cards but pay them off at the end of each month.

Savings? Savings are good. But it's nice to get some interest or appreciation on one's savings rather than burying it under the toolshed.

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Um, when 28 years old, take on a 30 year mortgage. By the time one is 58, one better be free and clear.

Over 75% of Americans are not free and clear and I know a host of people my age who have doubled their mortgages so they can live it up.

[JSmith]

"Um, when 28 years old, take on a 30 year mortgage. By the time one is 58, one better be free and clear."

We took out a 15-year mortgage when we were 30. When interest rates dropped a couple of years later, we refinanced to a ten-year (at fixed rates both times.)

Then we made some extra payments and were free-'n-clear at 40. No way were we going to make payments on anything for 30 freakin' years!

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