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from the what-if-it-were-in-the-Eastern-part-of-the-state dept.
Man wins $7 million in lottery after buying every single ticket:
Kevin Clark, from Candler in North Carolina, had a hunch that the top $US5 million ($A7 million) prize in the Mega Cash scratch-off game would be won in the western part of the state.
So he came up with an unusual strategy to ensure he got his hands on the lucky ticket – by travelling from store to store and buying every ticket he could find.
Mr Clark spent four hours on his quest to purchase every $20 Mega Cash scratchie ticket he came across in around 40 different stores.
And while it is not known how much he spent in total, it’s safe to say he came out on top after a ticket he bought from a Stop N Go outlet in Swannanoa, North Carolina ended up being the winner.
[...] In the end he decided to pocket a $US3 million ($A4.2 million) lump sum instead of taking the $US5 million as an annuity of $US250,000 ($A350,267) per year for two decades.
After taxes, he was left with a total cash prize of around $US2.1 million ($A2.94 million).
“I had a real good feeling it was going to be in the western part of the state,” Mr Clark said, according to the NC Education Lottery.
However, he said he was still stunned when his tactic paid off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2020, @11:03PM (2 children)
It is very doubtful that it is truly “logical” as it may negate other options for getting out of the “poverty trap” you mention. Studies show that low income folks tend to spend ~10% of their income on lottery tickets. (I’ve seen numbers anywhere from 7-13% from various sources.)
10% of your income is significant. You could divert that money toward lots of things, services, and opportunities that could allow you to get ahead: training, education, a vehicle to allow you to travel to a better higher paying job, etc. Even if you just put it in the bank each month, in a few years you have an emergency fund. And part of the cycle of the “poverty trap” is when people have sudden expenses they can’t pay, which ruins their credit and makes any future debt even more expensive for them. Having a cushion in the bank is the first step out of the cycle.
The lottery is a tax on stupid people, plain and simple. These people are mostly not in a life-long prison sentence — but the lottery often helps keep them in poverty. Calling it “logical” is almost as ridiculous and wrongheaded as playing the lottery itself believing it could be a ticket out of poverty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @12:45AM (1 child)
It's not a tax on stupid, it's a tax on ignorant. Big difference. It's a lack of education tax, exploiting the poorly educated and funneling that money back to the state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2020, @03:33AM
I disagree. What you say would be true if people were actually taught probability well in our educational system. But lots of middle class and richer folks wouldn’t be able to do a probabilistic analysis of why one shouldn’t play the lottery, yet they know it’s not a reasonable thing to do via common sense.
Thus, currently, the lottery is mostly a tax on the stupid, as well as the ignorant. Anyone with some basic logic skills can understand why it doesn’t make sense... you don’t need advanced math.