zlacker

>With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted

Addictions don't reason. Win $10 and some people are hooked for life.

> or harder for addiction to become really problematic.

Example: a school teacher spending $200 a week on lotto tickets, not life devastating, but do we really want this in our society? This happens a lot.

Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!" It's essentially a hope tax for the lower and middle class. I can think of better ways of collecting taxes.

>>Clubbe+(OP)
>> With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted

> Addictions don't reason.

That argument was specifically based on how gambling feels and not reasoning.

> Win $10 and some people are hooked for life.

That sucks, but ease of addiction is a spectrum.

>>Clubbe+(OP)
> Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!"

How do you explain the school teacher spending $200 per week, then? The teachers here collectively own one of the world's largest hedge funds. These are very wealthy people.

>>Clubbe+(OP)
Indeed, you can't argue state lotteries aren't gambling. But hey, there is a wide spectrum of how bad each form of gambling is, and lottery is very much on the lower end of it.

Very, very few people spend $200 a week on lottery tickets -- they spend a few dollars here and there a week. (Spending $200 is just silly and barely increases the chance of winning or return -- if someone can't see that, well, can't stop them from wasting money) Of course, I would like state lotteries to be further restricted, but that's still much much better than online sports betting -- people can lose six digits of wealth quickly, and that has a much bigger and immediate impact on lives than state lotteries.

>>random+Vk1
Whoever told you that, you should stop listening to them.

>>Clubbe+tY2
It was the teachers themselves who told me, but sage advice in general. You're quite right that teaching does tend to an attract a crowd that are out to lunch.

Still, the portfolio is public knowledge, so we can also verify what they say. In this case a stopped watch is still right sometimes.