And so is a hustler. Before you rush out and buy Richard Lustig's book about winning the lottery, ask yourself a simple question: why is this guy hawking a book if he has the winning lottery method? Writing a book is a lot more work than buying lottery tickets. His surname smacks of an aptronym: lustig in German means 'merry.' One imagines him laughing all the way to the bank with his book receipts.
The lottery is a fool's 'investment,' a self-imposed fool's tax: you willingly fork over money to the government beyond what they coercively take so that they will have even more wherewithal for all their wise and wonderful projects. And it is regressive: it affects mainly the the poor and innumerate, thereby insuring that they will remain poor and innumerate.
There are moral questions as well. It would be nice if we could agree on the principle primum non nocere, first do no harm, and nicer still if we could agree that that applies to the state as well as to individuals. State-run lotteries harm the populace as I have argued many times over the years. State-run casinos are even worse. But I know I am but a vox clamantis in deserto in a country filled with idiots becoming stupider and cruder by the minute.
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