ROBERTS: Lottery players victimized?

Unbelivable, the lottery is racist. I admit to playing the lottery , I don't use the mortgage money and I don't really expect to win ,but it is entertainment. Sure I can dream of millions, but it's just that , dreams. I watch movies but don't expect Sam L Jackson to be my neighbor or animated animals to talk to me. If the libs have their way the poor will pay 10 cents for a ticket and the middle class will pay 1 dollar, and the rich will pay 100 dollars, after all "it's only fair"

When I was kid this was called numbers running and it was illegal. The gov't saw someone making money and they weren't getting their cut so they shut it down and took over the game. Just like a rival mob. They sell false hope to the poor while fleecing them out of what little money they have. Disgusting and immoral.

In Great Britain they have the pools which pay out about 85%. The problem here is the greed-driven politician(s) who want everything both ways..... they want all the people's money and they want to give NOTHING back for it, as is usually the case when you're dealing with a group of sleazebags made up almost entirely of lawyers.

Every one with a dollar or two plays the lottery. It's true that a lot of minorities play the game, but here in Texas we have a lot of multi-millionaires and first time winners trying to strike gold twice. There are people who don't see themselves becoming millionaires through hard work, especially if they are working for someone else. Not every one can land an executive position in a Fortune 500 company. Scratch offs and the lottery allows players to dream of a big pay off that will lead to a better life. Unfortunately, for some winners who are not used to overseeing large sums of money, their lives are turned upside down. Many of them do not know how to write checks or balance a check books. And there are the "friends" and relatives who climb out of the walls, demanding their share of the money. If the winner does act like an ATM machine for these people, friendships and family relationships are dissolved. Easy money is not always the best money, because the appreciation for it is not in place, like when you have to work for every dime you put in the bank. There are plenty of horror stories of winners whose lives have change drastically. A lot of them are now broker (no money) than a shattered bottle. Not understanding finances, they thought their personal bank account(s) were limitless, and they could forever spend with reckless abandonment. I often dream of what I would do if I would win. But then I remember: I have to play to win. The thing is, I'm too stingy to blow money on a chance winning.

"Lotteries are, in essence, a form of regressive taxation that distributes resources and wealth away from those who can least afford to pay" This is one of the most foolish statement I have come across. No one is being forced to buy lottery tickets or "scratch-off," People voluntarily buy them. It's a product, no more and no less. The only time the government "takes" from anyone is when they collect taxes. Once could make the claim that buying an umbrella is a form of "regressive taxation" too, and one would be just as wrong.

The real problem is that politicians simply cannot bring themselves to directly tax large segments of the population. We only ever want to tax "the rich". But there simply is not enough rich people to tax to keep up with the levels of spending. So we have these schemes like the lottery that allow us to collect taxes, I mean money, from people that do not pay taxes to begin with. This is exactly the reason Obama and Democrats always want to impose more taxes on oil companies and businesses, large and small. It is the only politically viable way to take money from non taxpayers and still get them to vote Democrat. The taxes business pays are just a cost of doing business and like all costs simply have to be passed along in the cost of the products and services we all buy and use regardless of our individual income situation. The beauty of this scheme is that Democrats still get the money they want and also get to turn around and bash businesses for being "greedy" as they pass on the cost to the consumer.

The Lottery is a stupidity tax. Smart people don't pay into it.