Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for November 29, 2013

I’d like to hear, “You can’t LOSE if you don’t play!”

You have no chance of winning if you don’t play. But…If you do play, the difference is that you have less money.If you want to have more money, the conclusion is obvious.

Lotteries: A tax on desperation, poor maths skills and stupidity.

It’s a very democratic institution – everyone has about the same chance of winning, whether you play or not.

There are four situations where playing the lottery is rational:

1: You gain enough pleasure in playing that it is worth playing for that reason alone.2: It’s a charity lottery.3: A progressive jackpot has reached the point of making the expected value of a ticket higher than the price, (this does sometimes happen).4: You aren’t betting $1 against $10M but skipping coffee Friday afternoon against being able to tell your boss where he can go stick himself. (This does shade into #1.)

I think there may be a justification for state-run lotteries as an outlet for something people would do illegally anyway, but none whatsoever for the advertising blitzes that encourage the gambling. Your old-time, neighborhood numbers runner wasn’t allowed to buy TV time to push his product.

Lotteries: A tax on the mathematically challanged…

Winning is 50/50…. either I win, or I don’t.I’m a gambler at heart, and the lotteries are cheap and legal gambling with a high payout. I don’t go nuts, but I enjoy playing. I go to a casino maybe once a year, to eat and gamble a little. It’s all fun.

Very negative cartoon and comments. Why I won $2 just a few weeks ago…or was it a few years ago?

The thing is, I’m in the convenience store, and I see people blow their minimum wage paychecks or their social security on this crap and lose and lose and lose. The money’s supposed to go to schools, but it always seems to end up financing a new stadium for some jerkwad billionaire ream owner with the personality of a demented yappy little sweater dog,

Taxes are taken at gunpoint. Last I heard, no one has been carted off to court or jail or had their business or home confiscated for failing to buy a lottery ticket.

A “tax” on stupidity is fine by me. Odds of winning and amounts of payout are clearly available.

Lotteries were commonplace in colonial America as they were rightly considered to be a lot better than forced taxation.