Poor Man’s Tax

I was at the grocery store this morning getting the week’s shopping done. I had to stop at the customer service desk and, as I was standing in line, I noticed the man standing in front of me. He wasn’t dressed very nice and his one shoe had duct tape holding it together. From all appearances, he seemed rather poor. I thought about why he was waiting in line at the customer service desk. What is his purpose for being there??? Not that he didn’t have the right to stand there but I was curious as to why he was there. Was he buying stamps? Was he cashing a check? Was he paying a bill? After a second I thought of it….lottery tickets.

Sure enough!! He went up to the desk and he had a handful of lottery tickets. “Can you see if any of these won?” he asked. They didn’t. None of them. So what did he do? He bought more!! Of course he did. After all, the lottery is the poor man’s tax!

The lottery gives the illusion to people that they can actually get money they haven’t earned. That, if they play often enough, eventually the odds will be in their favor and they will win big. Be set for life. Jackpot!!

But it doesn’t work that way. Yes, occasionally someone will win big. But it isn’t very often. Out of the millions of people who play the lottery, there have only been a few…a few….people who have won enough to change their lives and have a better life. To top it off, many of those people who have won big actually ended up destroying their lives. They no longer have to work so they have no purpose or meaning in their lives. Everyone knows they have the money so they are bombarded with requests for help. They end up spending more than they have and end up broke. Back to where they started. Except without their friends and without their jobs, very sad and alone.

So what is the point of the lottery. As the title of this posting suggests it is the poor man’s tax. A tax on people who really can’t afford it. Or, as my brother puts it, a tax on people who are bad at math. People who can’t figure the odds out and think that they will win. The believe the illusion that is put out and fall for the whole thing.

What really bugs me about it is the way they advertise the lottery. “Please Play Responsibly”. As if that gets the lottery business off the hook for fooling people into spending their hard earned money. They, the lottery, are still responsible. They are still culpable. They can try to fool themselves into believing they are doing some good and that they aren’t forcing people to play. But they are still at fault because they know the odds. They know that the majority of the people won’t win. They aren’t bad at math. They know what they are doing. And they are counting on everyone else being in the dark about what they are doing. And so many people are in the dark. And that is just so sad.