I filled my car’s gas tank a few days ago, and when I went
in to pay the cashier for the gas, there was a man in front of me buying
lottery tickets. He spent at least five
minutes buying several different kinds of tickets. I guess there are what they
call scratchers, and then there are others where you have to recite numbers and
the clerk inputs them and prints out a ticket.
Those tickets must be the ones that you try to match to numbers that are
broadcast every night on television. He took his sweet time transacting the
purchase, and he left with a scowl on his face. I think maybe he blamed the
clerk for his poor luck.
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been stuck behind a slowpoke
playing the lottery, and there have been times when I’ve had to wait in a line
of them to pay for my purchase or get my change. I just hate that.
I have to admit that I have very little knowledge of how
lottery is played, but I see the signboards and the ads on TV that promote it
and tell how many millions of dollars are currently available to win. I also
sometimes watch the idiots in their tuxedos reading off the numbers as they
appear in front of me on the television screen, as though I can’t read them for
myself.
What I do know about the lottery is that it is a total scam,
and the chances of winning are about 1-in-5 million, but even that is probably
a low figure. It could be 1-in-20
million, or 1-in-a-billion. The point I’m trying to make is that the real
chances of winning are astronomical.
It doesn’t increase your chances to buy 5 or 10 or even 100
lottery tickets. That just makes you a
bigger sucker.
There is another aspect to the lottery that I hate. The majority of people who play it are poor,
elderly, minorities, or a combination of all three. I have no proof, but I’ve heard radio talk show hosts say that
there is actually a concerted effort to target the poor and the elderly for
lottery tickets.
Of course there are some players who are well off, or young,
and many are Caucasian. I know some of
them, and when asked they tell you that they play for the fun of it and they
enjoy the gamble that they might strike it rich, even against all the odds.
Well, that’s okay if they want to waste a few spare bucks for the thrill of it. I usually jokingly thank them for paying
taxes for me.
Okay, let’s suppose that someone actually does win that big
jackpot, several million large. What
happens then? There have been studies
done on jackpot winners, and the news isn’t good. Most go on a spree. Then
they try to help friends and family—boy, do they learn of new friends and
relatives fast. The studies usually
find that within two years of the windfall, the winner is worse off socially
and financially than they were before they won. Some have gone bankrupt, and others have committed suicide.
Unless a person is already an investor and has a good
financial plan, most do not know how to handle a big settlement. Those are not
the kind of people who would ever play the lottery in the first place, either.
So very few lottery winners have a better life from their good fortune. Winning
only adds to their misery.
I don’t know why, given the track record of lottery winners,
anyone wants to play that stupid game in the hope of winning. And I certainly
wish they would quit tying up the lines at every gas station from here to
Timbuktu.
