As I understand it, it's mostly just that lottery winners tend to be from the majority of people who don't have much experience of managing any large sum of money. So they get taken off by confidence men, and hit up for cash by unscrupulous relatives, and they buy shit they really can't afford, just like that guy with the $10 million from his dad's business that we were talking about a couple of years ago. It's not mysterious -- they just don't know how to deal with that much money, so they lose it.
And how is there a national lottery? My FB feed is full of it, too.
It's not quite national. You can buy tickets in 42 of the 50 states, IIRC.
I think 44. The BBC news site has a little article about it that lists the states and stuff.
No, apo was right: The states of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada are not participating in the draw.
For the record, I would buy a really nice drumset from here, pay off educational debt, and command the building of a combination zeppelin/sailboat, with a pony on that combination zeppelin/sailboat.
I like this post title, Stanley. Good job. You're a good kid.
Nevada seems out of place there.
They're not really fond of competition.
And looking at my own FB feed I see some scattered mentions of this that I could easily have overlooked if not for this post, before reading which I had no idea this was going on.
10: Thanks, neb. I'd let you flow my nose any time.
How is that many lottery winners end up losing all their winnings?
You're asking how it is that people who make regular bets with negative expected value lose lots of money? I have no idea.
My understanding is that a very few lottery winners throw it all at lame horses/drink it/party like it's the end of time, and these people get the reportage because there's a story. But the overwhelming majority give a big chunk to some good cause, set up themselves and their family in the style to which they would like to be accustomed, and live happily ever after. These people are not news, so you don't hear about them.
Yeah, a not too scientific study on Dutch lottery winners saw that most of them splurged on a few big ticket dream things: supercar, a bigger house, a round the world holiday trip, then settled down and went back to work.
Which is roughly what I would do, apart from the going back to work part.
If I were still working no way would I go back to work. Unless you're one of that small minority which is privileged to earn their crust by doing something they would do anyway from choice, that seems crazy. I would no doubt fill my days, possibly volunteering, possibly creating a non-profit in an area of felt need or something, but who in their right mind would go and sit in an office making money for some capitalist all day where they don't need to?
Almost all lottery winners that make the news wind up losing most of there winnings. I don't know whether in the end this amounts to many lottery winners.
I bought two tickets for $2.00 and won $3.00. I rarely play.
I would set my parents up in a nice assisted living to nursing home setup (Could easily blow $4 million that way over the next 25 years). Or else I'd get them a whole pile of aides and a decent place to live if no home would take them.
I think I'd buy a car, maybe one step up from a Honda Fit and move in a bit closer to the city to a 2-3 bedroom apartment, but I probably wouldn't spend more than $2500-3,000 per month on that for a while.
Since those tickets were bought with my BF we'd invest in a business employing more than 10 people (500K) so that he could apply for a green card.
I know of a good estate planning law firm which isn't a megafirm, and calling them is the first thing I'd do. ANd I'd try to decide if I wanted to take it upfront now or have it spread out. When I lived in California, I knew that I would have taken the lump sum, because the annuity payment would have been subject to California income tax the whole 20 years even if I moved elsewhere.
I buy lottery tickets all the time but it never occurred to me that they could attract taxes, so now I definitely am going to stop playing.
If you play regularly you should hold on to the losers because they can be used to offset taxes on any winnings.
If I won millions of dollars, I would buy a car many steps above the Honda Fit.
You people are all crazy. I'd use my winnings to buy more lottery tickets. In all 50 states!
I would buy an orbital space laser but never use it for violence.
23: I might do that eventually, but I wouldn't want to make decisions much above my current income level without being really deliberate, and driving a nice car around Boston where it will get dinged up sounds silly.
I would get a maserati, but then I would buy a hollowed out '80s F-150 to put around it to protect it.
Oh, I wouldn't be driving it anyway, since as a multimillionaire I would of course also have a driver.
And then I would paint "I WILL SUE YOUR ASS" in big letters on the F-150. In blood.
Not my blood, geez. I would buy blood.
What 1 said--I am too lazy to google it, but there is a research literature on what happens to lottery millionaires, and it ain't pretty. A partial defense is if the winners are part of e.g. a workplace syndicate, which helps protect against the vultures and local resentment. But in general, it's bad.
Somebody wants a piece of that sweet Pickuperati? Boom, dump some blood on 'em. How about them blood-apples, vulture?
You know how links to comments pause momentarily on the first comment in a thread? 31 paused on the one-word comment "Depends" and I thought Apo was making a menstruation joke.
According to Robert Frank in the WSJ :
The take-away is that sudden wealth only exaggerates your current situation. If you're unhappy, bad with money and surrounded by people you don't trust, money will make those problems worse. If you're fulfilled, careful with money and enjoy a life of strong relationships, the lottery could make those strengths better.
which sounds plausible.
I'd be back to funding my ninja-Ḥashshāshīn, and living in luxury in my inaccessible [except by cool 50s sports car/ekranoplan/stealth-zeppelin] mountain-lakeside fastness.
I'd buy a church and make sure nobody goes to it.
And I'd pretty much immediately start writing checks to my cousins, their spouses and maybe their kids for $11,000 per year, maximum before gift taxes kicked in. That's what (well it was 10,000 then) my grandmother always gave.
I'd give it all to the Bill Gates foundation because, you know, then you're at least sure it's put to some good.
That'll buy you a lot of blood.
You know, if you don't have an emo.
People in my office are getting together to contribute $5 each toward tickets, and split any winnings. I told myself it's for solidarity's sake that I joined in, but I may have brought something back with me from my recent first casino visit.
Incidentally, the actual purchaser in this pool is obligated to send photographs of the numbers of the tickets she buys, to separate them out from those she'll buy personally.
I may have brought something back with me
Crabs?
I am probably giving myself too much credit or humble-bragging or something but a friend at work and I were saying we'd be sort of lousy gazillion dollar winners because we'd buy a nicer place to live and pay our student loans and then be like "um, there was this shirt I wanted at Banana Republic...and..."
Like the idea of a trip around the world is obviously not appealing.
If you're unhappy, bad with money and surrounded by people you don't trust, money will make those problems worse. If you're fulfilled, careful with money and enjoy a life of strong relationships, the lottery could make those strengths better.
I agree with the first half of that, but not the second half. Even if your life is good, suddenly acquiring a large amount of money moves your life in a direction that most people just don't have much experience with. If you can adapt, you'll do well. If you can't, you won't.
I guess I would stress the difference between "will make things worse" and "could make things better."
Discussion of an interesting study , including link to full PDF. Suggests that winning the lottery makes mundane pleasures pall.
An interesting study for cross-comparison would involve happiness and content among those who lose everything they have, uhh, importantly I think, as accidental and non-social system causes. Bankruptcy and medical emergency, no.
Tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, fires, etc.
Then I was standing at a bus stop and notice an ad for the lottery. The current campaign says something like "we're talking that rich!" and then there's a picture of a guy going through his own lane in the Lincoln Tunnel while everyone else waits in traffic, or another has some asshole's dog watching through a window while he swims around in a giant aquarium with tropical fish and stuff. It's a fairly depressing vision of what unrestricted decadence could look like.
Of course I am reading the Dower, and although there was some relief for some, the immediate consequences for the Japanese of losing fucking everything was not delirious joy, cause like, they starved in the early occupation. But since the original are longitudinal studies of lotto with a decent period for a new condition to set in...
51:No pictures of the lottery winner surrounded by a thousand Sudanese children eating cheeseburgers and testing their new shoes? No images of emptying hospital wards? No lotto winners admiring their donated windmill fields or Humanity Habitats?
Well, isn't that so very fucking interesting?
Not that 52.2 is what I would do, although I have never bought one lotto ticket or one scratch-off or gambled a penny in my life...
What are we talking about after taxes, $200-300 million?
Is that enough to build and sustain a socialist media outlet?
It is not enough for a national party or political campaign.
It might be enough to fund a localized small-city Paris Commune example/martyring.
Like an "free abortion choice" city in an interesting location:"We got doctors, we got supplies, we got guns, we don't obey anybody else's laws, come if you need or can give help"
Well, isn't that so very fucking interesting?
Or even a bunch of people in an office crowded round somebody waving a cheque with a delighted expression, under a sign indicating that it's some well known charity. Which would probably happen, but god forbid they should point it out as a good idea.
54 - The Lotto people would have to work hard to choose some sufficiently anodyne charity that everyone has good feelings about. Hey, maybe the Run for the Cure people!
Hey, maybe the Run for the Cure people!
There's no way I'm giving Robert Smith any of my Lotto loot.
I disapprove, strongly, of lotteries, but if I had a massive windfall I'd entertain thoughts of (i) duplicating Travis McGee's Rolls Royce pickup truck and (ii) filling said Rolls Royce pickup truck with caramel.
The Human Fund?
Nothing from me for Phil Oakey, either.
How about hiring a comedy writer to help the vampires with their jokes?
58: Individually wrapped, or liquid?
What is the nature of this strong disapproval of lotteries?
I was asking Flippanter, Charley! And it's not a tax -- it's voluntary.
Highly, highly regressive.
Also, distinctly inconsistent what we are generally told are our common values (education, diligence, honesty, democracy, etc.). If politicians wish to raise (and expend) money for public purposes, they should justify the related taxes, fees, tariffs, etc., to the public in its voting entirety.
And then buy me a Rolls Royce pickup truck full of ponies.
That is maybe five ponies, tops. Assuming we are wanting them alive.
Oh god the ponies are burning! They're stuck in the caramel! Oh, it's horrible! Why, lottery, why?
How the hell hot do you serve your caramel, ST?
Depends on whether the ponies are fresh.
Caramel, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form -- whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell. Only an upheaval, a thrashing about in the sticky mass, showed where any life was... Ponies died like so many flies on sticky fly-paper. The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared. Human beings -- men and women -- suffered likewise.
Mmmmmmm. Disasterlicious.
68: Understood. You know who I would really hate to be? A state Governor. Those people are stuck between a rock and hard place: raise money! which means stimulate the private sector! But try not to do it in a regressive manner, because that is wrong. But at the same time, don't cut back on big-money corporate and development subsidies. Shit, man, that doesn't leave a lot left to work with.
Anyway, but this big lottery thing going on is apparently national. I don't know what that's about.
I would hate to be a pony stuck in boiling caramel.
I would hate to be a governor stuck between a pony and a caramel place.
Seriously, being a state governor is discouragingly difficult: hence the parade of buffoons, charlatans and Jerry Brown, who I guess is too old to care what anybody thinks.
Anyhow state-subsidized caramel-pony operations are wrong, wrong, wrong, and I don't care how many big-money Hollywood types they bring to town.
Tell those fat cats in Washington to put that in their Brooks Brothers pipes and smoke it!
And this is a show for children?. Sickening.
83: "He is a light brown with a darker brown mane.... Caramel is a forgetful pony, managing to lose his grass seeds for Winter Wrap Up more than once according to Big Macintosh. His goof frustrates Applejack and only adds to the backlog of work to get through during the wrap up."
Racist.
John, it's only caramel.
It melts ponies, but it's only caramel.
It melts ponies, but don't get me wrong--
It's only caramel.
79: What's weird is that while we may mostly hear about the charlatan governors, and there may be an increasing number of them, I think that there are still quite a few who are not idiots.
(I've listened to CSPAN radio proceedings of the National Governors Association meetings. On occasion. You get your blowhards, but there's a lot of hands-on discussion of strategies and policies. It's surprisingly much more serious and into-the-weeds of policy-making than what we hear on the national stage.)
83: http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/42093/detail/
"As God as my witness I thought ponies could swim in caramel."
Where is your God now, bronies? Where?
If your mortgage is under caramel, you have no more equinity.
you have no more equinity.
But you can get through it with your inimitable equanimity.
Wait is 6 a reference to a Lyle Lovett song?
(delayed reaction time, I realize)
95: Or maybe the flaming ponies of the Hindenburg.
Man, there are some times -- like when you find yourself deep into the google results for "trapped" pony -- when it's hard not to wonder "how did I get here?"
And the answer, of course, is the hindenburg.
Er, in 98, where I typed "hindenburg", I meant to type "government". No kidding.
"Trapped in caramel", on the other hand, is sort of depressing, as a shockingly high number of the links lead to this loathesomness.
Just to make sure i hadn't missed a tragic footnote to the crash of said dirigible, I googled "Hindenburg" and "ponies."
It should go without saying that this landed me on a My Little Pony slash fanfic site.
"Sorry about not being dogs, guys ..."
Nazi Ponies from the Dark Side of the Moon riffing on this.
When did you guys become such bronies?
106: I feel like the existence of that movie is too goofy for it to stay in my head. I keep forgetting it exists.
Ponies meet The Lottery meet Heathers.
107: So 104 was icing some bros?
112: You could put it that way, yes.
Well, okay, it's a little weird if you call it 'frosting'.
113:
Southern Keeper Sour Cream WHITE Cake MIX
So racist.
116: double chocolate surprise bronies.
My Little Homophobic, Racist, Smart-Shaming Pony. Probably linked here before.
Wait, it's a thing? Did teo or Tweety know this? Maybe I din't click enough of the links.
The world is not without controversy.
With all this caramel there must be a pony in there somewhere.
Oh I forgot, the tv commercial in the "that kind of rich" campaign is sorta cute. The woman on the couch keeps hitting skip on the stereo remote, and then it turns out she actually has Cyndi Lauper and a band in her living room. How Cyndi Lauper and the band know what button she's pressing on the remote and why she doesn't just talk to them is not explained. But I mean as things to do with a lot of money go, that's nauseating-whimsical in a less assholish way than buying a private lane in the Lincoln Tunnel.
From Sifu's link to Chris Sims:
she once cut off her tail so that a clinically depressed water dragon could use it to replace half of his moustache
I'm, um, kind of wanting to watch this show now?
If that fixed it, the dragon probably fit the criteria for dysthymia better.
I assumed "bronies" were my little ponies for boys, but of course I should have known the truth was far far Freeport. Although I for some reason find it slightly charming.
Really, the iPhone autocorrect for "Creepier" is "Freeport"?
87: I've listened to CSPAN radio proceedings of the National Governors Association meetings
Well jeez, no wonder you don't get our pop cultural references!
132: It's a metonym for "L. L. Bean".
135.1: worst euphemism for "I just had anal sex" ever.
I thought "swimming" was the euphemism for that.
131: I know. But there was no link in the earlier reference.
137-8: Here in my village, we say "going to Richmond." True story.
135: I'm astonished that it took this long for someone to pick up on that remark.
Other silly things:
I had a friend over last night, and during the making of dinner, a stray remark from the radio surfaced, to wit: "Greenland is the largest island on the planet." Discussion ensued.
- What was that? Greenland? What about Australia?
- Australia is a continent.
- True, I guess, but it's still an island.
- That's like saying North and South America are an island!
- Hm, I see your point, and yet, well, there must be some technical definition of what counts as an island, then.
- Australia is a continent because it's on its own tectonic plate. There are five continents: Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, Africa, and Antarctica.
- That's seven. Dude. Anyway, Europe and Asia are not separate continents, but a single one, called Eurasia.
You can see that it went on from there for a while. Good times!
Australia is the only continent that isn't attached or nearly attached to another continent, so it is also an island.
Oh ho ho. So you say, Moby Hick, so you say.
This discussion is roughly as interesting as debating whether Pluto is a planet.
I can definitely dig up some more MLP:FIM links, but to be honest the rule 34-ish ones were pretty disappointing.
No man is an island, but Nome, AK is not an island.
Did teo or Tweety know this?
teo did.
I thought everybody knew about bronies, honestly.
146: I beg your pardon, essear. A statement was made: Greenland is the largest island on the planet. I don't see how you can just let that go. Admittedly, we moved on to discussing just what were the five Kingdoms (taxonomically, in biology, you see). Oh, worlds were explored!
Greenland is the largest island on the planet. I don't see how you can just let that go.
Like this: shrug.
five Kingdoms (taxonomically, in biology, you see)
Six, no? Probably more now.
Greenland may be three islands underneath the ice sheet.
151, 152: Now that you mention, I am having a vague memory, but during the thread I thought it was just random punning. Maybe I'm just old.
144: Australia is the only continent that isn't attached or nearly attached to another continent
<cough> Antarctica <cough> (I guess southern Patagonia might be considered "close"--about half the distance between the Malay Peninsula and Australia.)
Here's the thing about classification: when it's things like kingdoms of organisms, and the reason the classification keeps changing is because people are learning about new organisms and new relationships among them, it's interesting, because the classification is a way of trying to organize new knowledge and understand it better. But we all know what Australia is and we all know what Greenland is and it seems to me it's just a matter of pure social convention which ones we decide to call "islands". I don't understand anything any better by changing my classification. So, I find it hard to care.
264: Agreed. it's super boring even to a boring geography person like me. From a distance they all look like flies.
Essear just doesn't care about tectonic plates at all.
we all know what Australia is and we all know what Greenland is
I'm imagining this said with a bunch of innuendo. Ah, yes, we all know about those islands, don't we?
Six, no? Probably more now.
Six or more Kingdoms, depending on your choice of model; three Domains on top of them.
143: Not a single one of these land masses is shaped like a pony. I am disappointed.
171: that wouldn't be very realistic.
