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Comments
Note that not all lottery tickets are of the huge long-shot Mega Millions Jackpot variety; there are still plenty of smaller cash prizes that you're much more likely to win, even if they're still comparatively unrealistic.
A lot of things are "pointless", Nova. Us talking about this comes to mind.
By that logic, drug addicts should be left alone because I bet they enjoy getting that next high.
The difference is that being a drug addict ruins lives.
Buy a couple lotto tickets or scratch offs for a few bucks does not.
Yep. The odds for winning any significant amount on them is still one in several thousand, and insignificant amounts (five dollars and the like) is still very likely to cause you to lose more money that you spend.
It is simply a waste of money for the most part. Spending one dollar a week on it is fifty dollars a year, and you could treat your family to the theatre, or buy a pizza and rent a movie and have a family night, or whatever. I could go and play paintball with a friend for that money.
^^ I dunno about that; plenty of people consider the lottery to be regressive taxation/a tax on the poor, for example...
There are arguments to support that. But the people who are getting "taxed", have the choice to not get "taxed".
It's a pointless but fun waste of money, and if you're smart about it, it's a small enough waste of money that you can still take the family out to movies, and buy good food, and get your folks what they wanted for Christmas and everything.
Much as I like scratching off tickets and coming out $25 ahead on a lucky streak, gambling addiction is still a thing, and poverty is still miserable enough that a lot of people are going to be driven to waste more on tickets. Financial stability is the key, here, and if it's possible to keep poor people from wasting what little money they have on Megabucks tickets so they can save it for practical issues, I'd probably support it.
Nines, I have no problem with the "I find it fun" attitude. Spending money on fun things: perfectly reasonable.
Spending money on a lottery ticket with the expectation of winning big: less so.
Can't it be both, CU?
^^ I don't think we're in disagreement there. I'm mostly debating with Nova at this point.
...at which point did you read that as something along the lines of "all fun is always good and comes before everything"?
^^^Sure it can, but your whole argument during this thread hasn't been that you find it fun. It's that you want to not have to work again.
The biggest difference between being struck by lightning and winning the lottery is that you can make being struck by lightning a whole lot more likely with the correct measures.
I know that you can. I also know that "it's fun" is a stupid reason to spend hundreds of dollars over the course of a few years. No, seriously, let's see:
- Over the course of a year, you spend $50. That's the price of a fun night out at the movies.
- Over the course of half a decade, that's $250. That's the price of a night out at an expensive resteraunt and splurging.
- Over the course of a decade, that's $500. That's the price of braces for a kid if you have one.
- Over the course of eighteen years, that's $900. That's the price of, I dunno, hiring a dress and a limousine for your kid's prom.
- Over the course of four decades, that's $2,000. That can pay for some people's funerals, or it can put a severe dent in it for others.
- Over the course of six decades (let's say, from twenty to eighty), that's $3,000. That's the price of staying in hospital as you die if your insurance doesn't cover it, or a fairly expensive funeral, or whatever.
That seems like a small amount of money when you say "Oh, it's just a dollar a week", but it adds up.
I didn't. I'm arguing against the mentality that just because someone enjoys something, it makes that something automatically okay.
Alternatively, what Nova and CU said.
Good thing nobody said that. You're the one who made the jump from spending money on fun to irresponsibly dredging into your vices.
CU said pretty much what I said (more broadly, even), and Nova is saying that it's not an efficient way to have fun (which I agree with, by the way).
...what?
Well, for example, surely spending $50 on a videogame, or a few books, or movies, or whatever would be far more fun for your money than buying $50 in lottery tickets.
fun accountants
you have to run your fun by them before you have it
in case youre not having fun efficiently enough
But no, seriously, I'm saying that there are far better ways to have fun with your money than to spend it on lottery tickets. Save up for four decades and go on a hot air balloon ride. That's far more fun than looking back and seeing a string of failed lottery tickets.
I don't understand how you can even make that an objective statement.
Having more fun while spending less money.
Presumably because no matter who you are, it's a lot more fun to read a book you like than it is to write on a piece of paper once a week and be told that you failed to win the lottery.
Unless you get off on failing to win the lottery, in which case it's no longer an objective statement, and you also have the weirdest fetish I've heard of.
I'm not talking about myself.
Why do you think people like to gamble? It isn't the money, it's the adrenaline. Jeez.
Do you honestly think you can say something is objectively more fun than something else?
What if I was a masochist that like to have my testicles punched and crushed and trampled by obese women, and I found that more fun than ANYTHING else on the planet?
No, but...like, I feel reasonable saying that a kitten is more cuddly than a komodo dragon. Some people may not find that to be the case, but it's not an unreasonable statement to make.
... You do realize that the adrenaline you are talking about is the risk of losing your money, in this case, right? That's pretty much explicitly the point of the lottery. They drain so much money from people that they can afford to pay out these huge prizes.
Like, I'm all for people having fun. The thing is, there are ways to have fun that don't involve throwing away money on something that is extremely unlikely to ever reward you.
No matter how much disposable income you have, it's still a waste for nearly everyone who buys it. For the same amount of money someone spends over a lifetime if they spend a dollar a week, you could buy enough books to fill a bookcase, you could buy a trip on a hot air balloon, you could take a holiday to the Gold Coast.
I'm not saying it's wrong to want to have fun, or to spend your money, or anything. I'm saying that there are better ways to have fun than to spend money on lottery tickets.
We aren't arguing whether or not it is wrong to have fun.
I still can't understand how you can think one way of having fun is better than another. Fun isn't objective.
There are people that consider going in a hot air balloon to be a "waste of money and time" There are people that think going to the Gold Coast is "throwing your money away."
It doesn't have to be. Do you have more fun going to the movies (or whatever) than paying the same amount of money to play the lottery? Then you're better off doing so.
And this is too long a derail for an unimportant word I used in passing.
One isn't an addictive drain. I think cigarettes are "fun" (that is, they fulfill my addiction) but that doesn't make them good for me or a good expenditure of money.
^^^Okay. Well then, answer this.
Do you find losing the lottery to be more fun than playing videogames?