So someone who spends a tiny amount on a lottery ticket is a sucker, but you spending fortunes on your boats isn't...?
Like I said gambling at those odds gives me no physiological satisfaction. Sure I "waste" money I have three boats and if you know anything about boats they always need work and are a money pit but they give me psychological satisfaction and are not an investment.
I basically look at every purchase as an asset or liability ...assets make you money or at least have a reasonable chance to do so. There is usually no pleasure in assets but work. Liabilities must have a pleasure element for me to spend and lotto has none. I'd rather give $20 to a homeless man.
Those aren't really the same. Even with junky food items, you're still getting calories, so you have energy to run on. You're closer with the TV reference because you're deriving pleasure without tangible benefit. The difference is lotto sells you a fantasy without any work on the presenter's part, and most likely won't pay out. Add on to that, the fact that it's the state that does it makes it particularly galling. They're moral and upstanding enough to provide gambling, but no one else is? Give me a fuckin' break. It's a tax on the poor and ignorant, with the worst gambling odds in the business. You'd get a better return both in fun, and monetary payout by going to a real casino.
can't win the lottery if you don't play it
I have never understood why some people think it is stupid to play the lottery. You are paying a very small sum for the chance to win an amount that would change your life forever.
You would be stupid to not play it at least once.
paraphrasing...
'I don't usually play lotto, but whenever I do play, I always choose the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 and 6; those numbers have the same chance of hitting than any random quick pick...which kinda shows the idiocy of playing'..
Lotto = Poor man's tax
Lotto = dumb mans tax. Bad at math tax.
Gambling in general in pretty precious in that it's a zero sum game. Produces nothing so I'm generally against it but at those odds it's just retarded. You seriously have better chance to become a CEO of a fortune 500 and make a hell of a lot more.
Lotto = dumb mans tax. Bad at math tax.
Gambling in general in pretty precious in that it's a zero sum game. Produces nothing so I'm generally against it but at those odds it's just retarded. You seriously have several orders of magnitude of a better chance to become a CEO of a fortune 500 and make a hell of a lot more.
not really.
the expected value of the lottery is actually higher when the value of the pot is lower, because the higher pot attracts more ticket buyers. the number of ticket buyers goes up exponentially, the chance of having to share the pot increases.
How did you come to this conclusion?
Those aren't really the same. Even with junky food items, you're still getting calories, so you have energy to run on. You're closer with the TV reference because you're deriving pleasure without tangible benefit. The difference is lotto sells you a fantasy without any work on the presenter's part, and most likely won't pay out. Add on to that, the fact that it's the state that does it makes it particularly galling. They're moral and upstanding enough to provide gambling, but no one else is? Give me a fuckin' break. It's a tax on the poor and ignorant, with the worst gambling odds in the business. You'd get a better return both in fun, and monetary payout by going to a real casino.
I did some basic calculations to see if megaplier is worth it.
The assumption I made is that 50% of the ticket sales goes into the jackpot. So since last jackpot was $340 million and this jackpot is $540 million, I estimate that they're expecting to sell 400 million tickets. I also assumed $389mm cash option - 25% fed tax witholding.
...snip...
Megaplier is totally not worth it because it doesn't multiply the jackpot. I calculated the the expected payout to be $1.3954 per play ($2)
Like I said gambling at those odds gives me no physiological satisfaction. Sure I "waste" money I have three boats and if you know anything about boats they always need work and are a money pit but they give me psychological satisfaction and are not an investment.
I basically look at every purchase as an asset or liability ...assets make you money or at least have a reasonable chance to do so. There is usually no pleasure in assets but work. Liabilities must have a pleasure element for me to spend and lotto has none. I'd rather give $20 to a homeless man.
Gambling winnings aren't normal income and are taxed at a higher rate, 40%, if I'm not mistaken.
no, other than capital gains, income is income whether wages or interest from a savings account or money you steal from your grandma or win in the lotto. the rate you are taxed at depends on your entire tax situation, ie you know when you fill out your forms (or talk to your CPA who knows your tax situation etc)
Let's say the lottery ticket costs $1, and it's 6 numbers long (5x 1-56, 1x 1-46). That's 56^5 46 = 2.5 billion possibilities. Say the jackpot is $540 million, and only 1 number wins.
That's an expectation of 21 cents, or a 79 cent expected loss on every ticket purchased.
The number of people buying tickets also adversely affects your payout.
So he's right.
Yep, my calculation has the jackpot split 400 million (tickets sold) divided by 173 million or 2.27 ways. If assuming no splitting, the expected value for each ticket (even at 40% taxes) is $1.84 / play.Gambling winnings aren't normal income and are taxed at a higher rate, 40%, if I'm not mistaken. At $540M, assuming no split prize and lump sum payment, you'll probably come out slightly ahead mathmatically, but I would be shocked if it's not a split prize.
My calculation has the jackpot split 400 million (tickets sold) divided by 173 million or 2.27 ways. In actuality, this is a conservative estimate because some of the 400 million dollars sold will be from megapliers, which will not increase the chance of having multiple winners.
A casino requires a special trip and significantly more money than a few pounds. A lottery ticket can be picked up on the way home or even online.
The problem with that is you will have a whole lot of other people probably picking that same combination so if it hits you'd split the pot with them.
Not that a bizarre sequence of numbers would have any greater probability of hitting but you would likely split with less people.
It doesn't require significantly more money. Go to the Roulette table, put $2 on Red. If you win, put the winnings on either Red or Black. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
Your money, if you're lucky, will go:
$2, $4, $8, $16, $32, $64, $128, $256, $512, $1024, $2048, $4096, $8192, $16384, $32768, $65536, $131,072, $262144, $524,288, $1,048,576, over $2 million. The odds of becoming a multimillionaire (ignoring taxes) via this method are better than your odds of becoming a multimillionaire by playing the lottery.