America spends more on "Lotto Tickets" than Music, Sports, Movies tickets COMBINED

in us •  7 years ago 

Source http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-12/2016-americans-spent-80bn-lottery-tickets-more-movies-video-games-music-sports-and-b

image

I knew that many people like to play the occasional "big lotto powerball" for novelty but I was unaware of this sobering statistic.

  • Over $60Billion spent on lotto tickets
  • this is about $250+ per adult per year
  • a quick analysis of many lotto winners declared "bankruptcy" 5 yrs later (see above source)

And let us not forget how many of the states launched this gambling sideshow, they promised how the monies would be used for "Education" in many of the states. Now many people play becuase of the "get rich quick approach". Many times this is targeting lower income groups who want to "win".

I suspect if the lotto went away -- many states would have a massive budget shortfall. It's a business that is only growing in size -- except when there is a massive recession.

image

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Finally. Someone has an answer for how Illinois can get themselves out of their huge budget problem, created over 30 years of Democratic mismanagement.

Looks like lots of upside potential for Illinois to push lottery sales.

Lotteries are a tax on stupidity.

Perhaps not surprising that the tax collections on stupidity are going to the moon.

STEEM On!!
DaveB

p.s. I pay my stupid tax once a week. Probably up to 50% of the level of my peers in TX per the reported per capita spending

I think all states are huge into lotto....but you can see from the graphs some are very dependent on these sales to fund the state expenses.

Yes it's the only chance of getting rich, lol

I see it when I go to the stores....but I didn't realize how big. Maybe they could take that money and go into Bitcoin :-)

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

people who buy lottery usually don't understand math. Like if the chance is 50/50 then i would expect payment of 2x minus small commissions. But lottery chance is way smaller than the rewards. But normally they don't want to think about it.

Agreed....and you see what happens to many that did "win"....years later file bankruptcy.

Its very upsetting how little effort is being used to actually generate money for oneself instead of wasting it on a 1/1,000,000,000 chance

Nor would the state want to tell them about this -- although they do post the odds. But imagine each year if that were put into some BTC or ETH or others...those are better odds...thank you for posting.

Someone did do the math. if in 2012 you put in 20 bucks every month into BTC till today you would have more than 1 billion dollars. I know people who easily spend 20 bucks in 1 day on lotto

There's a story....lol...of course I did not do that :-). But at least I am there and have been there for a year or more.