Realisticaly, I’m going to spend that $1 on a candy bar that I’ll enjoy for two minutes, or a Mega Millions ticket that gives me 3 days of great daydream material.
But the people who buy $20, $30, $50 of scratch cards at a time? That’s not playing for fun, that’s playing to win, which is really just a gambling addiction. The ones who buy 10 or 20 tickets at a time when the Powerball gets high because they think it gives them better odds? Yeah, those people are bad at math.
The way I see it, when I’m in Atlantic City on business and have time to kill, I can afford to blow $X at the casino if means I can enjoy myself- where X= the amount of money it would cost me to go to a movie, have a couple beers at the hotel bar, pick up a magazine, or whatever else I’d be doing to amuse myself for an equal amount of time. Likewise, I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth from the buck I spend on a lottery ticket once a week, just because it gives me something to fantasize about while I drift off to sleep.
Not that I don’t want to win, mind you, it’s kind of the whole point- but gambling is like booze or porn or whatever else: It’s fine to want it, but when you start to need it, it’s time to step back and look at yourself.
“The Jackpot is now 283 Million. We are … not bound by Truth in Advertising laws. We can legally deceive you about the payout and the chances of winning.”
I think TTDB is off-key here. How do they deceive? Everyone knows the actual payout is less, due to taxes. Or, in the case of an annuity situation, you get less if you select lump sum payout. Also, what does he mean by deception regarding the chances of winning; they publish the exact chances of winning.
I think a better target would have been: attacking the idea that “lottery sales go towards the state’s education budget.” Which is bullshit. No “extra” money goes towards education. The lottery funds are not going to a “good cause.” It simply transfers the responsibility of who funds the education budget from the general tax revenue to the depraved gamblers tax (the lottery).
I didn’t know that when I originally heard about those gigantic jackpots the US has. I’m used to seeing the number advertised as being the lump sum and not being taxed on it. Right now the Powerball jackpot is advertised as $70 million. Powerball.com does list the lump sum payment in a reasonable-sized font at least. That’s $39.1 million. Take half of that away in taxes and you’re looking at about $19.5 million as the real prize. That’s about 28% of the advertised amount that you get in your hand. Compare that to Lotto Max in Canada. The main jackpot at the moment is $50 million. Whoever wins that will get to keep $50 million.
My parents experienced some of the last upward mobility you’ll probably ever find in the US. Sure, they live a middle class life now, but their roots show pretty strong in some places, and the lottery is one. I’m lucky enough to have the perspective I do, and every Wednesday as they’re buying a $1 ticket, I put a dollar in a jar. Between the three of us, someone’s gonna make a fortune.
I think that Minnesota and Wisconsin have some sort of truth in advertising clause tied to their lottery… Perhaps it has changed over the years, but when they first started they were not allowed to promote the idea of winning. Advertisements were strictly informational this is the game, these are the odds type ads. They countered the dryness of the info with really clever ads that often won awards and were staples on funniest-commercial-shows. I was quite surprised when I moved to California and saw their Selling-the-Dream ads.
I’m strongly in favor of the lottery continuing because it’s the fastest way for a time traveller to make the most money quickly, while being the least likely to be influenced by the butterfly effect.
The time traveller can, for example, buy their Powerball ticket in Washington state just before the cutoff at 9:59 PM, leaving only an hour for any ripples in causality to reach Florida in time for the drawing at 10:59 PM. The light cones still intersect so there is still some risk there from radiation and quantum effects, but it’s actually far enough that the sound cones do not intersect, significantly limiting the chance the numbers drawn will be altered by the time traveller’s influence on the timeline.
Other techniques such as betting on sports matches and playing the stock market have a longer turnaround time and many more factors that could be influenced by an alteration of the timeline. Plus the payoff is lower. Casino gambling is too close range and easily influenced by changes in the timeline. Bringing future items to the past to fence them could be profitable but stands to seriously alter history, likewise with depositing money in an investment account 100 years ago.
So what I’m saying is - my device is nearly finished and this is my best chance at raising the money to fund a larger one. Don’t screw this up for me!
But… What the time traveler does with their winnings affects the past as much as anything, right?
Here’s the scenario: the jackpot is, $257 million (WA MegaMillions jackpot 2013-11-30 21:29PST), with the cash option of $139.2 Million, and after the 35% lottery tax about $48.72 Million. The time traveler wins $48.72 Million, and has three general options.
The time traveler takes the winnings immediately to the future, thus removing $48.72 million from the economy causing a (small) decrease in economic activity. People who would have been paid for their goods and services with some of that money and end up being poorer for the time traveler’s monkeying around with the lottery.
The time traveler sticks around with the money and uses it to buy things before taking them to the future or leaving them in the past. Either way the time traveler returns to the future (the long way or the short way, it doesn’t matter) without the winnings. This stimulates economic activity, and is probably good for the economy generally.
The time traveler puts the money in some kind of investment, returns to the future and reaps the rewards of the interest rate. This can be good for the economy (the money sits in a money market, or some kind of good stable mutual fund) and is used as loan fodder, since the time traveler doesn’t withdraw it for however many years there are between our present and the traveler’s home time. On the other hand it could be a waste, if unwisely invested and simply end up as lost capital, and diffuse into the debt structure of an investment that loses money anyway. Essentially being a waste of cash.
What I mean to say is, using time travel to alter the past (by winning the lottery) will alter the past (no ifs ands or buts)… and I posit that going forward in time with the money to the traveler’s point of origin is probably the worst choice, economically speaking, since it robs the present of both the existence of the cash (unexpected deflation), and it prevents (possibly positive) economic activity in the intervening time that the temporally disjointed cash could have done. Also, the cash brought to the future is an inflationary force. If a lot of time travelers did it, then the past would have problems with deflation from the disappearing money, while the future would have inflation from money essentially being minted from non-government sources.
I think you misunderstood my plan, which was to start at the moment when the Powerball jackpot is announced, jot down the numbers, and then travel backwards in time exactly one hour and ten minutes, long enough to purchase a ticket just before sales close. I then jump back to my original time (one hour later) and watch as the numbers are drawn, with my winning ticket. Thus “the past” and “the future” you’re referring to are only an hour apart. This is specifically to minimize the various effects upon causality which you’re talking about.
That plan also helps if it turns out your time machine doesn’t travel with you to the past. Avoiding your past self for a little over an hour should be easy, especially if your past self stayed next to your time machine for that time.
