More Losers Than Winners

Another record Powerball lottery event has come and gone. There were two winners in distant states from Georgia. At the height of the frenzy of lottery ticket selling more than 100,000 tickets were being sold per hour. Those people who track these types of events announced that the odds were very high that anyone could win. I saw a number of 1 in 175,000,000 chances to win the jackpot. Knowing the odds were great against ever winning the grand prize did not keep people from flocking to the lottery outlets to take the chance they would walk away a millionaire.

I found it interesting that the week when President Obama was planning and speaking at rallies, pushing for tax increases on the wealthy, that so many people were lining up to purchase their ticket to become one of the wealthy that would be required to pay more taxes.

Americans are a funny bunch of folks when it comes to such things as being rich. There are many people who are more than certain that all rich people are greedy and got their riches by taking advantage of other people. There are many people in our country who believe that increasing taxes on the rich is just what we need in our nation to solve our financial woes. Yet, they line up to buy lottery tickets in order to strike it rich.  

The stories have yet to be written as to the number of people who spent all their paycheck for the week in buying lottery tickets in the hope that they would hit the lucky numbers and become rich overnight. I was interested in hearing the plans many people had already made for the riches they were going to receive from winning the jackpot. Most planned to spend as much as possible on personal items with only a few people suggesting they would give to charity, should they hit it big and win the grand prize.

The same week of the record breaking jackpot in the lottery, the gambling crowd was back at the Capitol in Atlanta holding hearings on the wonderful large sums of money that would be filling the coffers of the state treasury only by allowing more gambling on horse racing. Across the nation, horse racing is proving to be an open door to more gambling by opening the door for the establishment of casinos. We are being told about all the wonderful things that will happen when we start running horses for Hope and that the only way we will be able to save the Hope Scholarship system is to have more gambling. We are being told that betting on horses is not really gambling but it is a calculated investment on the part of wise planners who study and have a strategy to strike it rich at the horse track.

From where I stand, tell that to the losers in the lottery and the horse racing track from this last week.

Follow Ray Newman on Twitter @RayNewmanSr