Quotulatiousness

April 14, 2013

Alternet: Ten facts about state lotteries and the poor

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:20

While I don’t object to lotteries existing, I still don’t think governments should be running them, but they’re involved in most states and provinces:

State lotteries amount to a hidden tax on the poor. They eat up about 9 percent of take-home incomes from households making less than $13,000 a year. They siphon $50 billion a year away from local businesses — besides stores where they’re sold. And they are encouraged by state-sponsored ads suggesting everyone can win, win, win!

State lotteries, which once were illegal, now exist in most states. What many people don’t know about lotteries is that they prey on those who can least afford it; most people never win anything big; and 11 states raise more money from lotteries than from corporate taxes. Beyond the moral, mental health or religious debates over gambling, lotteries are another example of how society preys on the poor and the working-class.

Let’s look at why state lotteries do far more harm than good — especially at the bottom of the economic ladder.

[. . .]

4. They hit the poorest the hardest. “Simply put, lotteries take the most from those who can least afford it,” wrote economist Richard Wolff. “Instead of taking those most able to pay (the principle of federal income tax in the U.S.), state leaders use lotteries to disguise a regressive tax that falls on the middle and even more on the poor.” A 2010 study found that households with take-home incomes of less than $13,000 spent on average $645 a year on lottery tickets, which is about 9 percent of their income. The reason people play lotteries varies, but it mixes hopes and dreams with desperation: poorer people see it as a slim chance to radically improve their standard of living.

5. Communities of color, less-educated spend the most. Numerous academic studies have found that non-whites spend much more on lotteries than whites, with one study putting the figure at $998 for African Americans and $210 for whites. Household with incomes under $25,000 spent an average of about $600 a year, while $100,000-plus earners spent about $300 year. People who never graduated from college spent the most, about $700 a year, while graduates spent under $200.

Of course, being Alternet, we have to have at least one of our traditional straw men to knock down:

7. They give the wrong message about solving poverty. Lotteries reinforce libertarian political messages, suggesting that everyone needs to take individual action in response to society’s inequities, even though the government has helped well-connected individuals, businesses and industries become rich for decades. This easy money for states diverts political debate away from society-wide analyses and solutions to what prevents people from moving up the economic ladder. Instead, it pushes individuals in marginal circumstances toward gambling as their hope for gain.

I’m not sure what is “libertarian” about corporate welfare, crony capitalism, and other economic distortions on the part of government to favour certain people over others, but setting aside the slur, this is otherwise a valid point. Encouraging people to take individual action? I don’t see buying a lottery ticket as falling into that category.

Differing national philosophies on child-raising

Filed under: Europe, Health, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:56

In The Atlantic, Olga Khazan compares the way American parents interact with their children to the rather more relaxed parenting styles of other nations:

The biggest difference between American parents and their counterparts in Europe might be that they are far more relaxed about enrichment than we are, according to a study released this week by Sara Harkness and Charles M. Super at the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Not only are Americans far more likely to focus on their children’s intelligence and cognitive skills, they are also far less likely to describe them as “happy” or “easy” children to parent.

“The U.S.’s almost obsession with cognitive development in the early years overlooks so much else,” Harkness told Slate.

For part of their research, the authors focused just on parents in the United States and the Netherlands. The differences are stark: American parents emphasized setting aside “special time” with each of their children, while Dutch parents spent a few hours each day together with their kids as an entire family.

American parents said they struggled to manage the sleep schedules of their babies and young children, explaining that they try to entertain or distract them when they wake up in the middle of the night.

Competition and co-operation in a free market

Filed under: Business, Economics, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:15

Sheldon Richman suggests that some people’s objections to free trade and free markets isn’t so much ethical as aesthetic:

Market advocates tend to respect the intellect of their fellow human beings. You can tell by their reliance on philosophical, moral, economic, and historical arguments when trying to persuade others. But what if most people’s aversion to the market isn’t founded in philosophy, morality, economics, or history? What if their objection is aesthetic?

More and more I’ve come to think this is the case, and I believe I witnessed an example recently at a lecture I gave at St. Lawrence University. During the Q&A a woman asked, in all sincerity, why society couldn’t do without money, since so many bad things are associated with it. She also suggested that cooperation is better than market competition. I replied that since money facilitates exchange and exchange is cooperation, it follows that money facilitates cooperation — a lovely thing, indeed. Government, I added, corrupts money.

I also said that competition is what happens when we are free to decide with whom we will cooperate. I don’t know if my response prompted her to rethink her objections to the market, but I am confident her objection was aesthetic. For her, money and competition are ugly. Perhaps I didn’t respond on an aesthetic level; it’s something I have to work on. But I tried, and so must we all when we encounter these sorts of objections.

Like that nice woman, many decent people dislike markets because they find them unattractive. And they associate markets with other things they find unattractive besides money and competition: (rugged, atomistic) individualism, selfishness, and profit. F.A. Hayek noticed this, writing in “Individualism: True and False”, “the belief that individualism approves and encourages human selfishness is one of the main reasons why so many people dislike it.” If that’s the case, philosophical, moral, economic, and historical arguments may fall on deaf ears. The objections must be met on an aesthetic level.

An alternative Britain would be “Cuba without the sunshine”

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:06

Dominic Sandbrook recounts the history of a slightly different Britain: one where Margaret Thatcher lost to Jim Callaghan in 1978:

As historians now agree, Mrs Thatcher never really stood a chance: Britain was not ready for a woman prime minister. As she herself had remarked only eight years earlier: ‘There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime — the male population is too prejudiced.’

In her place, the Tories turned to the bumbling figure of Willie Whitelaw, an old-fashioned patrician Wet whom they decided would connect better with the British electorate.

In the meantime, the country was reeling from crisis to crisis. Scarcely had Callaghan returned to No 10 than his premiership was consumed in the notorious Winter of Discontent. As one group of workers after another — lorry drivers, railwaymen, bus drivers, ambulance drivers, caretakers, cleaners, even grave-diggers — walked out on strike for higher wages, the country ground to a halt.

Buoyed by his election victory, Callaghan was in no mood to compromise. Rather than break his declared 5 per cent national pay limit and risk higher inflation, he declared a State of Emergency and summoned the Army to drive Britain’s petrol tankers.

It was a catastrophic mistake. On February 12, 1979, a date that has gone down in history as Black Monday, fighting broke out between pickets and soldiers at one depot outside Hull.

In the chaos, one soldier — carrying live rounds, in contravention of orders — opened fire and killed five people. It was one of the most shocking moments in modern British history.

Callaghan resigned the next day, the last honourable act of a decent man overwhelmed by events. But contrary to his expectations, the Labour Party did not turn to his Chancellor, the bushy-browed Denis Healey.

Instead, they lurched to the Left and elected as their new Prime Minister Michael Foot, with his flowing white locks, walking stick and impassioned socialist rhetoric. The real power in the land, however, was Foot’s colleague Tony Benn, who replaced the disgruntled Healey as Chancellor. And in the next few years, it was Benn who presided over the most sweeping socialist measures any Western country had seen in living memory.

To the horror of many in industry, Benn insisted that Britain’s declining economy needed a dose of shock therapy. The top rate of income tax went up to 98 per cent, and the government announced a one-off 5 per cent ‘equality levy’ on households with income over £50,000 a year.

As frightened investors began to withdraw their money from the City of London, Benn introduced sweeping exchange controls. He also, in an attempt to shore up Britain’s crumbling manufacturing base, introduced the most stringent import tariffs in the Western world.

The reaction was pandemonium. As inflation shot over 25 per cent and unemployment went above two million, horrified European leaders insisted that Britain’s new policies were incompatible with membership of the Common Market.

But Benn was adamant. ‘You turn if you want to,’ he told his party conference in 1980. ‘Labour’s not for turning.’

The following year, as the economic picture continued to worsen, the Government introduced controls to stop people taking sterling out of the country. As a result, the foreign package holiday market collapsed — although landladies in Blackpool said they had never seen more business.

There were rumours that Foot was planning to move his turbulent Chancellor, but they were blown away when, in April 1982, Argentine forces landed in the Falklands.

H/T to Roger Henry for the link.

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