That said I put my $ in yesterday as well...by choice

WHICH households? What distinguishes them from households of similar income that don't spend this much?

The whole article kind of stinks of anti-poor propaganda, which is , of course, to be expected from a pro-business publication.

The poor, of course, deserve to be poor because they make stupid decisions. For some reason, they don't play the stock market with their $13K yearly incomes, nor do they buy real estate when the economy is bad.

Praying didn't work (no surprise there) looking for a better job hasn't worked, the trade-school education you can barely pay for was worth an extra 50 Cents an hour...

Poor people play for the same reason the rest of us play when the jackpot gets astronomical, "Somebody's gotta win, may as well be me".

I remember when I went to Las Vegas for the first time to attend a trade show back when I wasn't making much money. there was a bank of machines there with the big flashing signs that said "WIN A HOUSE!". Guess where I spent most my free time?

a slim chance-no matter how slim--is better than none.

And then there is the additional factor that once you have learned that your hard work and focused effort haven't gotten you anywhere, you begin to see your life as adrift and at the mercy of the Fates. That being the case, you might as well give them a little door through which they might help you if they chose, and that little door comes in the form of a lottery ticket.

And in a time when hope is in short supply the lottery does quite well.

that they're forcing the people to make desperate hail marys to try to get out from under the crushing jackboots of the fascists.

I just came out of some bad financial times and yes I still occasionally bought lottery tickets but usu sally
just a couple of bucks when the jackpot was real high. Is it just me or does this so called survey sound way out of wacky. I know that even a single person trying to live on $13000 a year is going to have real difficulty paying rent, buying food, paying for gas to get to work not to speak of utilities and such and having anything left over to spend on the lottery. Another question when they say $13000 are they talking gross or net income because if that is gross income I guarantee you this person doesn't have any money left in less they are living in Mom and Dad's basement.

and frankly I don't believe it.

but I also wonder how income is measured. For example - say Bill gets a disability check and SSI of $1100 a month and that he also gets HUD benefits of $500 a month which cover his housing and food stamps for $200 a month which cover some of his food expenses. How much then, is his income? $13,200 a year or $21,600 a year?

I am not sure how much of that Bill really got, but Bill was a real guy that I knew back in the 1990s who got a mental disability check as well as SSI and you could see him often with a string of scratchers tickets. Of course too, if he won some that could lead to double counting. Say he spends $40 on scratchers and wins $10 back, which he then uses to buy more scratchers. The stats might then show that he spent $50 on scratchers.

Still, as an average, considering that many others either don't play or simply cannot afford to, a 9% result seems absurd.

tobacco products.

How much of those households mentioned spend part of that income on cigarettes - which some people say is a waste, since it all goes up in smoke.

And the poor who live in constant stress use it just for that reason. Economically it's a waste, but the misery of being constantly stressed makes it a better option to many.

I don't smoke, but I understand why many do.

The more stress, the more I smoked, up to 3-4 packs a day.

When I quit things had quieted down to about 15 cigs a day.
It *DOES* calm the nerves.

The "numbers" you cite are the results of a hypothetical experiment studying the 'peanuts effect'. There is NO study published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty that supports your bogus claims.


Haisley, E., Mostafa, R., & Loewenstein, G. (2008). Myopic risk-seeking: The impact of narrow decision bracketing on lottery play. Journal Of Risk & Uncertainty, 37(1), 57-75. doi:10.1007/s11166-008-9041-1

They got their "source" originally from a twitter feed, which then sourced a PBS transcript, which a brief mention of a 2008 article in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, which is misrepresented by the PBS commentator Jeffrey Brown.

The actual article is

Myopic Risk seeking: the impact of narrow decision bracketing on lottery play.

http://sds.hss.cmu.edu/media/pdfs/loewenstein/MyopicRiskSeeking.pdf


This study was not trying to find out what percent of the poor bought lottery tickets, and there is not any info about households less than 13,000 buying 9% of their income in tickets , but they do mention several papers on lottery statistics offhand, it's possible one of these papers has the statistic, not so far I've been unable to find it.

The closest is this line
"Approximately 50% of households with an income less than $25,000
play the lottery, and among the households that play, the annual per capital expenditure is upwards of $550 (Clotfelter et al. 1999)"

but it's not clear if the $550 is the average for all Household or, only those of 25,000 and lower. Still it's not 9%, especially if you remember that 50% of the poor do not play at all.

One paper on lottery statistics says that the annual amount spent on lottery tickets broken down by income brackets doesn't vary much, from $125-$145. Of course this means lower income brackets use a higher percentage of their income, but that's a given for anything the poor purchase.

I also found several blog posts pointing to the 2008 journal article in Risk and Uncertainty, saying it says the same thing that the PBS douchebag did when it in fact does not, so these "journalists" are not checking source, including the schmuck from PBS

although I am just taking your word, rather than double-checking myself.

However, if 50% of households spend $550 per capita (presumably per household and not per householder) and the other 50% spend zero (although how do you measure "play the lottery"? Does buying one or two tickets a year count?) Then the average would be $275, or perhaps 2% of income. (Given that the average income of households making less than $25,000 a year is perhaps $13,000).

Still $550 a year is a good chunk of money to just throw into the street for nothing more than hope which is quickly dashed. Over 10 years it is $5,500 and over twenty years is $11,000, not including interest. Put that money in your newborn's college fund every year and by the time they are twenty you'd have perhaps $15,000 which would pay for a year of college.

getting out of poverty, due to whatever reasons you are there. That's our system, if you haven't got the education, sometimes even if you do.

They are investing a certain sum of money in a high risk, but high payoff investment portfolio.

I guess what Business Insider means is when poor people do this, they are wasting their money on get-rich-quick schemes, but when millionaire venture capitalists do it, they are Industrial Giants of the John Galt mold.

Typical sneering against the poor by bigoted corporate magazine.