You don’t have kids, do you.
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may?
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This one simple trick to never lose money playing a lottery:
I’m no expert in the matter; but I’ve read that pathological gamblers exhibit an interesting difference vs. others in their response to ‘near miss’ conditions.
In practice, non-wins are just losses; but many games have flavors of non-win that look ‘closer’ to win states than other losses do and some people are a great deal worse at correctly identifying those as just plain losing rather than as getting close to winning. Generally to their profound detriment.
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As quoth Jello Biafra: “When you are no longer useful you can finally retire; to the glue factory of your choice.”
(speaking of lost causes, I know that Biafra lost the war; but not even being recognized by spell check, much less the international community? That’s cold.)
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If it happens, the GOP candidates will immediately call for I.D. checks for lottery ticket purchasers.
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I don’t think that dollar amount is entirely accurate. In my region, 70 grand is barely a working class income. Middle class doesn’t really kick off until 100-150k. Then again, if I can get out of debt and build my RV/tiny house, I could be pretty happy on >$20k a year.
But yeah, I’d say you need enough that you no longer worry about basic needs (now and future), and have enough left over to do whatever thing makes you feel good about life- Any more than that doesn’t really make that much difference.
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If we all live a 100% Fox-approved life, Idiocracy can come sooner 
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Oh, my last check is going to bounce like nobody’s business!
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I’ve heard the lottery referred to as a tax on stupidity, but after working at a convenience store and selling a lot of lottery tickets many years ago, I came to a different conclusion: the lottery is a tax on desperation. Of course according to economic theory a tax on desperation should disincent desperation, so that’s a good thing.
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Oh no, dear Lord, no! You leave that to us, as we know better. Let us billionaires buy the politicians, and it will trickle down, I promise! No need for the masses to get involved, except to vote for who we tell you to!
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haha, yeah. Those guys. Sheesh. Am I right?
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It is certainly regional, increases with a larger family, and is largely subjective. Bit the studies I’ve read peg the mean right about there for a family of three in an average part of the US.
As I have mentioned, I am now in the bay area, and 70 is not a fun number to live on. But when I lived in PHX a few years back, it would be perfectly fine.
(And if you want to grasp my thoughts on income and wages, the Questions thread and a few linked threads are a great place to start. Let’s just say I’ve seen a broad expanse of the income spectrum)
Right there with you. I’ve ridden in limos and drunk scotch that costs what most people earn in a month, and I’ve had to decide whether to dumpster dive or shoplift if I wanted to eat that day. You get a very interesting perspective from that kind of variety.
Still, all things being equal, I’d rather have an extra billion dollars. If nothing else, it would be nice to know my vote counted.
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Those studies don’t say that happiness stops increasing. They say that once you’ve fairly comfortable with basic needs met, the rate at which money buys more happiness dramatically decreases. It’s still a monotonically increasing function.
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You’re right that choosing less-frequently-chosen numbers (and, in particular, avoiding the numbers that can appear in dates) improves the expected payout by making it less likely that you’ll share the prize if you do win. But the ABC story didn’t recommend that. They recommended betting on automatically-chosen numbers.
Their recommendation is faulty not only because a popular number is as likely to be auto-picked as a unpopular one, but also because their “reasoning” went like this: most winners auto-pick, therefore there is some unknown mechanism that makes autopicked entries more successful. In fact, there is no such mechanism, and auto-picks win more simply because they’re played more.
Watch the video. It’s a cluster-fuck.
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I feel like I’m going to be sick.
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