Who Wins the Hope Tax

With the record bajillion dollar victory for some lucky person somewhere in New Jersey, there are a record bajillion tickets tossed on the floor with a shrug. How many people, who hope for a better life for themselves and their families played the lottery compared to how many people won it.

Lotteries tax community hope. They strike the poor the hardest. Even for the rich, that two dollars for a ticket once a week comes to 104 dollars a year, and would be better spent in an investment vehicle, like a stock or a bond, that goes directly towards innovation, community-building, and the seeking of a real return on investment.

For the person like me, who lives on very little (thankfully we need very little), two dollars a week is actual grocery money in our budget. It's a little extra in repayment of loans. It's a little extra saved towards the future of children who do not yet exist.

Lotteries would work better to build communities, in my opinion, if 3/4 of the ticket went into your social security account. Even them, it would be sort of a nightmare of identity theft and fraud, right, if that was implemented on a grand scale?