RSS Feed This entry was posted on Friday, June 12th, 2009 at 12:25 pm and is filed under FYI. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
 |
- At Other Sites
- Beam Me Up
- Book Review
- Breaking News
- CBO
- Discussion
- From the Trenches
- FYI
- Ground Control to Sen. Democrats
- Health Alert
- 2008 Election
- African AIDS
- Babies
- Bad Studies
- Book Reviews
- Bush Health Plan
- Diabetics
- Drugs
- Health Care Access
- Health Care Costs
- Health Reform
- HSAs
- International
- LAZIK Surgery
- Malpractice
- Media Advisory
- Medicaid
- Medical Economics
- Medical Tourism
- Mental Health
- Minimum Wage
- Portability
- Racial Disparities
- RAND Studies
- Safety
- Scary Forecasts
- SCHIP
- Seniors/Medicare
- Socialized Medicine
- Supply Side
- Telemedicine
- Transparency
- Uninsured
- Vet Care
- Vision Thing
- Workers Comp
- Hits & Misses
- Holiday
- In Memoriam
- In the News
- Interesting Videos
- Memorial Day
- New Videos
- NHS Update
- Notable and Quotable
- Obesity Update
- On Capitol Hill
- Personal Testimony
- Petition
- Plans
- Policy Update
- Question of the Week
- Quote of the Day
- Season's Greetings
- Song of the Season
- The People Speak Out
- Updates
Categories
Contributors
- Ron Bachman
- Michael Bond
- Jim Frogue
- John Goodman
- Linda Gorman
- Robert Graboyes
- John R. Graham
- Devon Herrick
- Regina Herzlinger
- June O'Neill
- Roy Ramthun
- Greg Scandlen
Recent Posts
- Can Medical Care Be Delivered by Cell Phone?
- Should You Own Your Own Cancer Cells?
- CIGNA CDHC Results
- No Reduction in Crashes After Cell Phone Bans, Stress Hormone May Treat Diabetes, and High Deductible Health Plans
- An Argument Against the New Mental Health Parity Law
- Exercising Keeps Your Cells from Aging
- Why are There Collectivists?
- Obama’s Spending Freeze, Virginia Makes It Illegal to Require Insurance, and Lancet’s Vaccine Retraction
- Super Bowl Weekend
- Employer Selection of Health Plans for Employees is Wasteful
Blogroll
Jun 12, 2009
Neal Wanless, a 23-year-old, down-on-his-luck rancher, won a $232.1 million Power lottery jackpot last week. Yet you are unlikely to see editorial outrage at the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Slate or in any of the columns of writers who routinely bash capitalism for its excesses. But why not? Of all the complaints ever made against capitalism – from Karl Marx to the present day – there is one area of life where the complaints ring true: the lottery. Consider:
- One person becomes extremely rich.
- The winner's riches come at the expense of everyone else – the vast majority of whom have below-average incomes and many (maybe most) are actually poor.
- The winner did nothing to deserve, merit or earn his reward – everything he has is the result of sheer luck.
- In one single drawing this lottery produced more inequality (among the participants) than any act of Congress or private sector venture ever could.
So why is the left so blithely acceptant not just of lotteries, but of state-created-monopoly-lotteries? Why do columnists who become apoplectic about the salaries of CEOs ignore those whose riches are the result of random chance? Why are lotteries such a popular source of revenue among Democrat politicians? I report. You decide.
11 Responses to “The Lottery”
RSS
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Facebook
Flickr
Helium
June 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Lotteries are all about revenue generation for the State. The multi-million dollar payout serves to distract our attention from the immense tax the state imposes on lottery tickets.
If I tried to operate a lottery out of my house, taking 1/3 of the revenue for myself, the State would not only shut it down and take all the money — they would probably put me in jail.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I concur. It is another example of the government extracting monopoly profit from sin. However, I think I also support the Lottery, because it is a voluntary tax on stupidity. Other taxes punish industrious, intelligent, and thrifty people, so it is good to have at least one that levels the playing field!
June 12th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
John, I think you are asking a deep psychological question. The answer could be very revealing.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Are you trying to find out how many HuffPo and Daily Kos readers look at your blog? Just kidding! Liberals, I think, view with pity the strivings of the underclass to make the big time via the lottery. They would argue that because those poor people don’t seem to know how to organize in their own interest there is all the more reason to construct the ultimate welfare state so they will no longer feel the need to buy lottery tickets. As Jeff Foxworthy has commented: “Sophisticated people invest in the stock market; Rednecks play the lottery.”
June 12th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Maybe the Left is accepting because it sees everything as a zero-sum game. If anyone gets rich in a business arrangement, it can only be because the masses are being exploited. Therefore a lottery is morally no worse than capitalism, and is in a way preferable because the random winner is more deserving than an evil capitalist trafficker in human misery.
June 14th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
[...] Goodman asks why Egalitarians aren’t angry at the lottery: Of all the complaints ever made against capitalism – from Karl Marx to the present day [...]
June 15th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Wow, John! Good point. My quick answer is that liberals don’t actually object to luck: they actually object to income earned by people who work hard and smart. My answer surprises me, but I can’t off-hand think of another answer that fits the data as well.
June 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Maybe there is a positive externality. By enabling an easy outlet for people who need to gamble, it lets them spend a few $ and avoid the bigger temptation of going into a casino!
BTW Ben Franklin supported using lotteries to provide funds for public goods, so it is a strong American tradition. Banning them would be un-american (and would swiftly be replaced by numbers rackets by the gangs and mafia).
July 31st, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Hmmmmm….. I think disproportional free market earnings are often viewed as 1) the result of cheating, and/or 2) the result of exploiting/gaming large numbers of people.
I think lottery winnings get a pass because we trust that the lottery system is fair.
July 31st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
[...] added my answer on his blog. I’ve thought of one other. Could it be that many of the statist critics see choice as [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
You know the “justice with empathy” that Obama said he was going to appoint to SCOTUS, the rule of law be damned? Maybe this isn’t about how much money you have, but of your identity as “a poor person” or “a rich person”. If you get rich very suddenly, I can be sympathetic toward you because you’re still “a poor person” (”a person of poverty”? What’s the PC term?) until you get massively rich, while someone who earns their riches invariably does so gradually, and is therefore “quite well off” shortly before becoming massively rich. It takes a year or two of having money before you’re a wealthy person.