Lump sum, or on installment? As an aside, Maverick, you really have socialism on the brain don't you? How 'bout them slippery slopes, eh?
$1.50 for 300 million Americans is socialism. Having a lottery where there's a guaranteed millionaire for every million dollars in the pot is just another way to divvy up the winnings for a bunch of lucky SOBs. Still got to get lucky enough to be one of the winning few. And no, your analogy doesn't work for someone like Bill Gates. Gates EARNED that money so he deserves EVERY penny.
Yes, BUT... "He doesn't NEED all that money. Therefore the government SHOULD step in and distribute his wealth to others". Get it now?
Not really. The whole idea of a lottery is "getting lucky". Many would argue that capitalism is about "getting lucky". So why not just remove the luck and give us all the certainty one gets with socialism. I mean why should one winner get "all" the money while the rest of us get nothing? Ring a bell? LOL.
High prizes brig out the players who risk 1 dollar to get 1/2 dollar return. To me that's a voluntary 50% tax since only the state governments can run lotteries.
Why have one Superbowl winner? Wouldn't it be more fun if we let the top 6 teams split the Superbowl trophy. You know, instead of one team hogging all the glory.
341 million "cash" option after taxes would be 341 x (1-.35) or 221 million. You would spend roughly 179 million so you would "net" 42 million on your "investment". If I had 179 million dollars sitting around I don't think I would go for it. There is a huge risk that someone else might win it. There is also the logistical issue- How would you fill out 179,000,000 lottery slips? Perhaps you could use a computer program however there is always the risk of clerical/programming errors. What if the ONE slip that had the winning number on it was jammed in the printer? Another question is how could you physically run the required number of slips through lottery machines? (179,000,000/5 plays per slip)= 35,800,000 tickets. even if it took just 10 seconds a slip you would spend 99,400 man hours just to run the slips. You have 3 days (between the Tuesday and Friday drawings. That would be roughly 33,000 man hours each day of running play slips. Assuming you could hire trustworthy people at 10 bucks an hour you would spend close to a million dollars just in pay. Then you have the risk that one (or more) of those people would not turn over their tickets to you..... The lottery is a tax on the ignorant. I saw in my state that monthly lottery sales were over 193,000,000 last month. Nobody won a jackpot. As a matter of fact I was curious on the "payout" on the typical drawing and for the powerball it was just over 100,000 and I can assure you that the sales were well in excess of 2,000,000. With all that said I think I am going to "be ignorant" this week and blow a dollar of the megamillions.........
Better yet... give each team in the league a small trophy. You know, for "trying hard".. .and because "everybody is special"... "everybody is a winner".
Illinois is the first state that is going to allow you to play the lottery online. Maybe others will follow. This would remove a lot of those concerns and you could probably hire a programmer to buy all the tickets online in a matter of minutes. Not sure how that would work but I'm sure it's possible. http://www.illinoislotteryonline.com/ http://www.illinoislottery.com/
And so 400 lucky players each getting a million is no different to you than everyone getting a buck fifty? Any other all-or-nothing observations you'd like to make? Here's mine: A mind is a terrible thing to waste on indoctrination, don't you think? P.S. Thanks for the heads-up on the new Schwager MW book. Finally, some useful information from you.