Slashdot Mirror
House Proposes Legalizing, Taxing Online Gambling
eldavojohn writes "Passed in 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is set to go into effect June 1. New efforts by Democrats in the House of Representatives aim not only to stop that but to legalize and tax Internet gambling. Jim McDermott (D-WA), said, 'This is a huge boon to the state governments. If you look across the country you're seeing programs cut. In Arizona, they just cut out a program for children's health for 40,000 kids. Here's a source of money.' Basically, the bill proposes that for each state, a 6% cut would be taken from all wagers and go to the state in which the bet was made online, while federal would get 2%. They estimate in the next decade this would amount to $30 billion for state and tribal governments and $42 billion for the federal government in new taxes. Banks and casinos appear to be very much on board, while the usual crowd (Republicans, Focus on the Family, Think of the Children) gathered in opposition to the move."
I have a tendency to agree. Despite the social problems gambling brings. Just like alcohol, it seems better to tax it instead of watching the profits go somewhere else.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
what better way to fund state governments than predating upon the weaknesses of your citizens.
Ten bucks says you're wrong, sucka!
why "Republicans" are against this?? Aren't they supposed to be in favor of small goverment and fewer regulations? This is exactly why the tea parties are becoming so big, we should be able to do what we want with our own money in a free society, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson Who cares? "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
Given that many of the current online gambling sites are run anonymously by organized criminal networks outside the US, how would collection or enforcement work? Would gamblers be obliged to write how much they won on their annual tax returns, like we're supposed to note purchases made online?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
It's a tax on deposits made into an online casino. Huge difference.
a) Instead of showing ANY fiscal restraint, the governments kept expanding to take advantage of the property tax bubble.
b) low interest rates pushed forward a lot of activity in the home building market, creating a lot of jobs which will not be replaced.
c) the executive class, whose pay has increased from 50x average to 450x average is actively shipping jobs overseas (to the tune of thousands).
d) the long term trend is wages will stagnate or drop towards those in BRIC. (brazil, russia, india, china). This means the value of houses, etc. will drop because people will have a smaller amount of money for paying for property. Smaller incomes also mean smaller taxes for the governments.
So the long term trend is lower property taxes, lower property values, fewer jobs, lower paying jobs.
The governments are going to absolutely hate it, but they are going to have to cut a lot of programs outside of welfare/unemployment benefit programs to prevent social unrest.
People's expectations of living in a 3,000 square foot house are going to have to reset back to 1600 square foot houses (or even the 1100 square foot houses prevalent in the 1950's.
And that's ignoring the scarily fast advances in robotics lately. An entire swath of basic manual jobs are on the verge of going away in a few years.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm from Arizona, and this is some possible good news for arizona children, considering some recent changes placing arizona in a negative light for changes in state legislation.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
Online gambling is totally un-regulated, and many online poker sites have been caught cheating their customers. If many have been caught, imagine how many do it every day. Online gambling should remain illegal to protect stupid people from their own addiction of giving their money away to unadulterated cheaters.
Nice to see the land of the free to get an another check in the checklist of things its free people are free to do.
How do they want to tax gambling when the server is somewhere abroad ?
Forbid credit card companies to deal with foreign gambling companies ? But US based gambling companies are fine ? That will go down nicely with the WTO.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That sounds pretty extortionate. Consider that many games have a return rate in the high 90%s.
Previously a hundred dollars could go through dozens of wagers before being reduced by half on average. Now, that same hundred will provide much fewer wagers for the the same game.
I am actually more of a social conservative than most of these groups, and I fully support legalizing and taxing this. If you want people to be responsible, they have to have freedom. It's just that simple. A society where people don't engage in victimless crimes because the state is putting a gun to their head isn't a more moral society, it's just one where we pretend that everything is hunky dory.
It seems to me that it would be inherently hard to monitor online gambling to ensure that the people running the online casino are actually playing fair. After all, it would be fairly trivial to set up a website to take peoples money but behind the scenes code it such that nobody ever wins. Of course, if nobody ever wins anything, they'll eventually stop playing, but you could easily set rules to feedback just enough money to keep them interested. Maybe return 80 cents on the dollar, but have code make sure that nobody can ever break even.
How would the federal government handle this? Do they insist on seeing the full source code running on every online casino site? If they do, how do they know the code the casino gives them is the actual production code? Basically, it would be too easy to load the dice at an online casino and take everybody's money.
This isn't a comment on the morality of gambling in general, or whether or not it's a good thing. It just seems like it'll be too easy to rip people off using some [not even that] clever coding.
yes, they are doing it, but this further measure would just compound the harm.
For example, "the lottery" has regularly been shown to basically be a "poor tax." Isn't there a "usual crowd" who speaks out against regressive taxation? Aren't they leftists?
I would actually argue it is more of a "stupid tax" but I also feel that way about most forms of gambling.
If Congress isn't going to rein in the legalized gambling known as "investment banking", it's only fair that they allow the average citizen to make stupid baseless bets with their money. At least when individual citizens do it they're (usually) using their own money.
what better way to fund state governments than predating upon the weaknesses of your citizens.
What makes gambling a weakness? I don't gamble because I don't find it fun but a lot of folks do.
And considering recent events on Wall Street, gambling houses actually give you a fairer deal.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
How might such a law affect video game assets in the face of taking gambles? If I buy, with real money, a bunch of in-game loot and then take a gamble on successfully defeating the other team, or open up a second-life gambling casino, what would the government tax me on? my video game fees? my profits from selling loot?
I don't understand why the Republicans don't like this. I'm a Republican and would be completely for it. It's called a sin tax, people. This is right up our alley.
Last I heard, you can still trade stocks and futures. Maybe all they need to do to bring everything into line is to create a new kind of derivative that shows results and settles hourly. Then have wall street run it.
Nullius in verba
I'm all in favor of taxing stupidity... do the Republicans, Focus on the Family, and Think of the Children all oppose this because it places an undue tax burden on their members?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Times are good: RABBLE RABBLE MORALITY RABBLE EVIL GAMBLING
Time are bad: RABBLE RABBLE TAX INCOME RABBLE THINK OF THE CHILDREN
Make up your minds politicians.
this is what I understood:
1. gambling in US is legal in casino. They have systems that guarantee that you will loose money.
2. gambling online was made illegal so that casinos will not loose money (from gambling, drinks, hotels etc). They also have systems that guarantee that you will loose money.
3. nobody cares what the citizen wants if some corporation wants something else.
Where is the democracy? - (dmokratía) "rule of the people" [wikipedia]
The governments are going to absolutely hate it, but they are going to have to cut a lot of programs outside of welfare/unemployment benefit programs to prevent social unrest.
For the US, austerity and higher taxes is the only course left to return our Government to sound financial standing, I'm afraid. Or otherwise, we'll end up like Greece - all because of the reason stated in the parent.
Congress and every politician needs to be bitch slapped and the special interest groups that protest when their programs are about to be cut need to get a grip.
Sorry teachers, but let's face it, other countries do a much better job educating their children by spending much less than we do - so it's not a problem of money.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Isn't the US already getting massively fined for blocking overseas gambling? Will they now tax overseas gambling wagers and eliminate this fine, or is this only allowed for state-side operations? I would consider the $100 billion fine reduction to be a bigger boon than the tax revenue.
Relevant link: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/10/12/1411242/US-Faces-100-Billion-Fine-For-Web-Gambling-Ban?art_pos=11
The summary stated that they would take 6% for state and 2% for Fed on each WAGER... That is incorrect... they are taking 6%/2% of your DEPOSIT in the online gaming account. If they took 6%/2% of your WAGERS, you'd be broke in no time!
Given this level of taxation, I'd be in favor, just for the legalization aspect alone... I'm generally not in favor of "feeding the beast" with more tax revenues, but if it gets me legal online gaming, then I'm okay with it.
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
So, EVERY ROUND OF POKER, 6% of the pot goes to the government? There's no way to break even on that!
Even at its most lax, this more than doubles (probably more than triples) the amount of money that it siphoned away from a bid: most houses are not so greedy as to take 6%!
This makes gambling unfeasible, rather than making it illegal. Ugh.
The proposed rate (depending how you read the write-up either 6% total, or 6% plus 2%) has either been set by someone who has no understanding of the math behind gambling or by someone who is looking to deliberately kill on-line wagering while not appearing to do so. A 6% (or 8%) government rake on top of the the existing house edge (or house rake for games where you don't play against the house) will crush players, making virtually every gambler a short-term loser.
congratulations you just figured out the basic premise of being the house in gambling. All the games are already set so that the house has the advantage. In different games it is a different margin but in the end the house plays many more games against many more people so that the law of large numbers sets in and they will always win, by how much will vary slightly but in the end they win. You didn't think Vegas paid for all of its showgirls by paying gamblers to win money did you? Also you don't need everyone to loose all the time to make money, you just need MOST people to lose more than they win. The few winners as you note are spread around so that people have the illusion that they might win big which they can but not as likely as the house is to win big. This is why gambling should be an entertainment not a job and anyone who thinks other wise just doesn't get it, well in some cases they do get it because if you are not playing against the house and in stead other players you just have to be smarter than they are. Some of the games have small player advantages like blakjack if played properly the house just throws you out if you consistently win too much.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
Basically, the bill proposes that for each state, a 6% cut would be taken from all wagers
First, what? Of all wagers, win or lose? Right now, you can hypothetically wager for an indefinite amount of time if the odds of winning are 50/50 (which they aren't but play along) and you never fall to zero. If each transaction is taxed, then you lose 6% on each hand, automatically, no matter what? I hope that's just poorly written.
Second, I'm against expanding gambling. Proponents point to Las Vegas and think that Spitsville, Arkansas will be just like that if only they legalize Keno. Well, no. What always happens is that the people who can least afford new, expensive habits end up losing everything. Crime goes up. Social service costs go up. Law enforcement costs go up. And the expenses are never covered by the trickle of tax revenue. Seriously, if you're against regressive taxes, then you kind of have to be against the realities of gambling. Warren Buffett isn't going to go broke on the craps tables, but Joe Sixpack very well might.
But more than that, I hate the outright lies told by the gambling lobbyists when they're trying to get it legalized. I lived in Missouri when they were voting on whether to add riverboat gambling. The idea is that all the taxes from it would go to education. How can you vote against that and take money away from the kids? Well, they were kind of telling the truth. What really happened was that if the education budget was $X (I forget the actual numbers involved), and the tax revenue from gambling was $Y, then the new education budget was still exactly $X. The difference was that $Y of it came from gambling, and the rest came from the general fund as usual. Furthermore, the total amount of taxes collected did not go up, as a lot of the hypothetical extra revenue was lost to decreased sales taxes, lowered property values, etc., while service expenditures went up quite a bit. A couple of years into the grand experiment, it looked like Missouri was losing about 3*$Y from their bottom line. The casino's owners, on the other hand, were quite happy to export the revenues to their own state and let someone else clean up the mess.
I'm pretty libertarian in my views. If you want to do something and it doesn't harm anyone but yourself, then have at. Contrary to the tone of the summary, I have no moral objections to gambling whatsoever. In practice, though, gambling seems to cause a lot of collateral damage around its participants. I guess I lump it in with smoking in restaurants; although I understand the arguments for allowing it, I have to admit that I've enjoyed not having it around anymore.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"The bill calls for a 6 percent tax on all deposits to be paid to state and tribal governments made by residents of their jurisdiction. For example, if someone living in Missouri puts $1,000 into an online gambling account anywhere in the country, $60 would go to Missouri's state government."
Imagine if you had to hand over six percent of the money in your pocket as taxes just to be allowed in the door of a casino. Incredible horseshit, no? To even suggest it is ludicrous. And yet there it is.
I'm glad I live in Canada where they don't tax your gambling winnings at all unless you're a professional gambler.
Sadly, as the U.S. continues to collapse into the black hole that is it's debt, more of this kind of thing will happen.
The bill calls for a 6 percent tax on all deposits to be paid to state and tribal governments made by residents of their jurisdiction. For example, if someone living in Missouri puts $1,000 into an online gambling account anywhere in the country, $60 would go to Missouri's state government.
Why is it totally different when something is done "over the internet?" Gambling is illegal in person, but it is legal if a network cable is involved?
Suppose I setup a gambling room where everyone goes into their own stall and gambles "over the internet." If they will, I will give them their winnings right away, then take the payment over the phone. Maybe I offer this service for free and just profit by selling drinks. Of course, maybe they are actually playing against the person in the stall next to them, but that's legal now because it is was "over the internet."
I'm not against this bill per se, but it is silly that if you did the same exact thing, but without the internet involved it would be illegal.
Nice troll in the summary, but it looks like the "think of the children" crowd is on BOTH sides of this issue.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
First they tell you how much the tax revenue will benefit the "children".
After a few years the money ends up in the general fund. Such BS.
Just another rich special interest that a politician wants to create. I wonder why???
The house always wins. Gamblers know this. Maybe a 2% spread. Now the government wants a 8% vig?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
What group is he talking about when he mentions "Think of the Children" as one of the "usual crowd gathered in opposition"? When I googled for a non-profit called "Think of the Children", the only thing that came up is a group that works to help orphans in Vietnam. I really can't see them taking a stand on this (and I checked their website.
Part of the problem with the summary (besides listing a group that as far as I can tell doesn't exist) is that it lumps all of the opposition to this into one group. Focus on the Family opposes this because of the documented negative effects that gambling often has on families when one or both of the parents gamble away the money needed to take care of their children (whether that is a sufficient reason to outlaw gambling is another question, as is whether outlawing gambling actually addresses the real problem in those situations). The point is that it makes sense for Focus on the Family to oppose anything that moves gambling further into the "acceptable" social area.
Republicans in general are more likely to oppose this as a new tax than because of its legalizing online gambling. Do you really think that this won't be used as an excuse for the government to monitor everyone's internet usage because some people are avoiding the tax?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Call me when I can buy pot without having to figure out an excuse for getting a "perscription."
No, I will not work for your startup
Unfortunately gambling effects everyone the person knows. It affects the families of gamblers as they resort to lying, stealing, and other means of getting money so they can continue to gamble. It interferes with work.
Stop! It's ban hammer time!
Unfortunately ALCOHOL affects everyone the person knows. It affects the families of DRINKERS as they resort to lying, stealing, and other means of getting money so they can continue to DRINK. It interferes with work.
Unfortunately VIDEO GAMES affect everyone the person knows. It affects the families of GAMERS as they resort to lying, stealing, and other means of FREEING UP TIME so they can continue to PLAY. It interferes with work.
Unfortunately ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN affect everyone the person knows. It affects the PARENTS of the CHILDREN as they resort to lying, stealing, and other means of getting money so they can FEED the CHILDREN. It interferes with work.
Unfortunately CIGARETTES affect everyone the person knows...
Lemme know when I can stop. There's so many things to be banned by the Righteous Ban Hammer Of Righteousness! [Insert hymn of your choice]
Let's please allow small ($1000) wagers on professional sporting events. No college. Let's not leave all that to Vegas, too. I'm not one to play online slots, where the odds are dubious. I'm also not into online poker where I could be playing a robot or some fool with a computer behind them. A sporting event's outcome is printed on dead trees, and visible for all to see. I'd much rather take my chances with $50 on an NFL game than to nickel & dime away $50 on some slanted card game. Please? With Constitutional Rights and Sugar on top?
At the risk of my karma, "poor tax" and "stupid tax" have a tendency to be relatively similar. In most cases (not all) there is reason someone is poor (like spending money you can't afford to spend on the lottery).
I question why the government is ALWAYS looking for a new source of revenue. Let's see... income tax, sales tax, property tax, gasoline tax, inheritance tax, lotteries, and more. Then there's talk about VAT and gambling tax now. How about just spending within the budget and make do? Or shall we just turn over all of our money to the government and they can provide for us?
see my post below
The headline gave me hope for our country me until I got to the fifth and sixth words, sigh.....
House.... Proposes.... Legalizing.... Taxing......... Online Gambling (damnit!)
Ring the bells of societal justice!!!
I think this is more about the big player(s) in gaming "ready" to control this segment of the gambling market. The Class-1 gaming industry is as ossified as most mature industries in the U.S. with vaguely inappropriate relationships with various gaming commissions and IP litigation that effectively captures a gaming innovater.
If this were to ever get any momentum, the regulations would encourage the biggest companies in gaming and discourage any dev shops that get big ideas about entering the gaming market.
I wonder how the States would react to this? Most of them are doing gaming through Native American reservations anyway and probably see this as the first step to losing control of the tax revenue.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I've noticed that whenever a story that is likely to be viewed as favorable by most Slashdot users and it pertains to Democrats, the label is prominently displayed. However, when there's one that would be viewed negatively, it's hidden. This article for instance. There's not one single mention of Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo's party affiliation. By the way, he's a Democrat. I'm not a D or a R (I'm more libertarian than anything else), but I just find the duplicity on this site frustrating.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I don't really follow your argument. You compare gambling itself to handing an alcoholic a beer and then you went off on a tangent about the State Lotto. I don't really see the connection between any of these things unless it is that you meant to say that private gambling should be legal/taxable and the government lotteries should disappear since you can get the same income from private gambling. If that's the case then I totally agree. Government Lotteries are wrong. Private gambling should be allowed and possibly be taxed (I'm fine with it but legalizing gambling is a bigger point I think). Same with alcohol and cigarettes. The government shouldn't endorse any of these but should allow them.
I would actually argue it is more of a "stupid tax" but I also feel that way about most forms of gambling.
Participating in a lottery is not necessarily a "stupid" proposition, depending on the circumstances. I'm also not talking about cases where the payout of a particular lottery is great enough that the expected value of a lottery ticket is greater than the cost of a ticket. I'm speaking more to the personal utility of a particular sum of money (let's call it f(x), where "x" represents a sum of money, and the result is the utility of that sum of money). For a particular person, that function is most likely not linear. In other words, f(2x) is not necessarily 2f(x). For many people, f(lotto payout)/f(cost of ticket) can be many times greater than (lotto payout)/(cost of ticket). Given a sufficient level of this, the expected utility value of playing the lotto may end up being larger than the cost of the ticket, even if the expected dollar value of playing is still less than the cost of a ticket.
I suppose that you could try and argue that people whose utility function of money is not linear are "stupid," but I would argue that not taking into account the utility a particular sum of money would give you would be the "stupid" move.
To further expand upon this point, let's take a reverse case. Suppose I offered you a $1,000 ticket with billion-to-one odds (10E9) that paid 1 quadrillion dollars (10E15) if you won (and you were only allowed to buy one ticket). The expected value of the ticket is $1,000,000, so the odds should indicate you would take that offer. I would imagine that most "smart" people, if given that opportunity, would not take it, because their expected utility value of playing would actually be lower than the utility value of $1,000.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
For example, "the lottery" has regularly been shown to basically be a "poor tax."
I would actually argue it is more of a "stupid tax" but I also feel that way about most forms of gambling.
Yes, but numerous studies have shown that lottery revenues disproportionately come from poor areas. It may be a tax on the stupid, but it's the combination of bad education and economic distress that tends to lead people to take greater risks.
If a stupid rich guy spends $25/day on the lottery, nobody cares. If a stupid poor person does the same thing, his family might go hungry even while hoping that he bought a "ticket out of the slums."
Also keep in mind that a tax on the "stupid" (which also can mean poorly educated in this instance) is also taxing the same people that were failed by public schools. No one should graduate from high school without understanding enough probability to get why playing the lottery is a dumb idea, just like no one should graduate high school without understanding why racking up credit card debt is stupid or how to make a budget or how to evaluate the terms of a loan.
We've seen the bad results of millions of idiots who don't understand how money works and take out ridiculous mortgages, get themselves into stupid debt situations with credit, etc. The failure to educate the "economically stupid" (whether rich or poor) can affect us all.
Make a Department level governmental agency in charge of promoting organized gambling - All organized gambling will cease in fifteen years. Look what they have done for education!
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Actually, gambling and lotteries is one of those issues where left-wing activists and right-wing activists tend to find common ground. The left-wing activists don't like them precisely for the "tax on the poor" reason. Right-wing activists don't like them because they find them to be immoral.
Most religious groups regardless of political stances oppose gambling in all forms as well: Christians oppose it as avarice and usury. Jews oppose it as stealing from the poor guy who lost his bet. Muslims are very clear that prosperity should come from work, and the Koran forbids it explicitly. Hindus and Buddhists oppose it as a lack of self-discipline leading only to bad results.
I am officially gone from
Ok I am not allowed to bet on an electronic card, but I can bet on GM and Exxon for a couple hours at a time. How is Day Trading, not gambling? The real problem with it is using the money to fund bigger government. Can we make sure that the idiots that go broke gambling, are not eligible for food stamps?
It's actually 6% tax on deposits, not wagers. That's a huge difference. BTW, a better tax would be a 6% on withdrawals because most of the time the pros are withdrawing so a tax on withdrawing doesn't hurt the poker economy, just hurts the pro's bottom line. A tax on depositing hurts the poker economy as a whole, and will decrease everyone's win rates. In the end, a deposit tax will even hurt the pros more because more people deposit than withdraw.
Lying isn't inherently bad on its own.
If lying weren't harmful, it probably wouldn't be illegal. But laws against perjury, forgery, false advertising, breach of contract, making a false statement on a copyright registration (Ashton-Tate v. Fox), false patent marking, etc. are on the books.
Last time I checked, Congress doesn't have the power to tax interstate commerce....
> Suppose I offered you a $1,000 ticket with billion-to-one odds (10E9) that paid 1 quadrillion dollars (10E15) if you won (and you were only allowed to buy one ticket). The expected value of the ticket is $1,000,000, so the odds should indicate you would take that offer.
Considering the entire world's total GDP is only $70 trillion, the odds indicate that it's a scam and the expected value of the ticket is $0...
Lotteries are anti-socialist and anti-capitalist. From a socialist perspective, lotteries make millions of people poorer in order to make a few super-rich, rather than spreading wealth around more evenly. From a capitalist perspective, lotteries make people wealthy at random rather than based upon their productivity.
if I had mod points.
How about half way with sports books all over usa?
We have lot's of race books why not let them do other sports as well?
Why give the states more money when they give so little to the public? Make it clear to government at all levels that the people are willing to pay taxes only if they get wonderful benefits in return. Lousy schools, limited health and welfare and streets filled with crime and danger are not signs of money well used by government.
Not that I'm arguing a lot of people don't live within their means, but besides poor financial decisions some people can easily go broke even without being stupid. The video may be long, but I found it interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=channel
Take it from someone who works for a gambling company, there are no winners in this industry. This isn't comparable to alcohol abuse either. It'll take you a long time to lose your house to alcohol (by which time someone will send you off to counseling). If you are addicted to gambling you could lose everything you own within the hour and there is no one to help you. No one will break your bones over alcohol debt, but they sure as heck will over a gambling debt. This industry is a whole new level of "bad for society".
Don't rely on the government to regulate gambling either. In our experience, government regulations serve two purposes:
1. Ass coverage
2. Helping specific casinos that lobbied the government
For example, one country mandated the *minimum* amount of money a player may lose an hour, or the use of specific hardware that only a single gambling company happened to sell (instant monopoly!).
Yeah, no one ever thinks about how kids' credit cards are always being stolen by online identity thieves when they use them to register online gambling accounts.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
There are just WAYYY too many of these people that become tax burdens to the state or start off as such. With the exception of the retirees, most of the guys at the horse track during the day have "crippling injuries preventing them from work" meaning that while they can spend the day at the track and jumping up and down when excited, they can't be bothered to get a job at least licking stamps and posting letters.
I'd rather tax the shit out of these people to recoup at least part of their expenses. The only thing I think is REALLY screwed is that it should be 50% not 8%
> Lying to preserve peace is neither evil nor wrong.
Does that mean that you'll pretend to submit to Islam to avoid upsetting terrorists?
children's health for 40,000 kids
Republicans, Focus on the
Family, Think of the Children
Place that bet, light that smoke, lift yer glass!
It's for the kids!
And no I won't log in any more.
Of course, if He doesn't exist, then truth and lies and hurting or not hurting people doesn't matter.
It makes me really sad hearing this.
I want to live in a world where people want to be nice to their fellow human beings (i.e. telling the truth and not hurting them, preferably both where possible) because they are human beings, not conditioned on whether God exists or not.
I'm sad to think that there are a large number of people who would stop loving their fellow human beings if they learned that God doesn't exist. I hope they will change the basis of their morality---but I don't want such a change forced upon them. If nothing else, I hope they will keep believing, so their society won't degenerate into chaos and disorder.
I suppose that you could try and argue that people whose utility function of money is not linear are "stupid," but I would argue that not taking into account the utility a particular sum of money would give you would be the "stupid" move.
They aren't necessarily "stupid," but they are acting illogically if they believe their choice is a rational one. If anything, the poor people who make up the greatest percentage of lottery revenues should have a utility function skewed away from what you're proposing, since to them a few extra dollars in their pocket might allow them to get more to eat, clothes on their back, etc. It's in their best interest (personal utility) to hold onto their cash, rather than take a risky proposition that will very likely lose it. Sure, having a million dollars might solve their problems, but that's an unlikely scenario (and if you look at the history of lottery winners, giving these people hoards of cash rarely does great things for their lives in the long run). Only rich people who have "money to burn" might have a rational personal utility value skewed the way you suggest.
On the other hand, perhaps you're conflating "personal utility" with "perceived utility." But that's not what anyone generally means by a "utility function." For most people, the only "rational" justification for playing the lottery is just what it's supposed to be for -- entertainment. And in that sense, the personal utility value is often much greater than expected value. The thrill of the lottery is what you're paying for, more than the actual chance that you might win.
Suppose I offered you a $1,000 ticket with billion-to-one odds (10E9) that paid 1 quadrillion dollars (10E15) if you won (and you were only allowed to buy one ticket). The expected value of the ticket is $1,000,000, so the odds should indicate you would take that offer. I would imagine that most "smart" people, if given that opportunity, would not take it, because their expected utility value of playing would actually be lower than the utility value of $1,000.
Most "smart" people wouldn't take a bet with billion-to-one odds with the condition of only being allowed to buy one ticket, no matter what the prize. And that is the smart choice, unless you have $1000 to burn and want the entertainment. (Not to mention that 1 quadrillion dollars is at or above the total wealth of the world, so this scenario is a scam on its face.) But I still have no idea of what their "expected utility value of playing" is, aside from some roundabout way of referring to the entertainment value of gambling.
Oh, and by the way, there have been examples of people who have made actual rational lottery bets, namely syndicates that only buy tickets at a time when the expected value is positive and buy a large enough number of tickets so that the chances of winning are reasonable, if not 100%.
Suppose I offered you a $1,000 ticket with billion-to-one odds (10E9) that paid 1 quadrillion dollars (10E15) if you won (and you were only allowed to buy one ticket). The expected value of the ticket is $1,000,000, so the odds should indicate you would take that offer. I would imagine that most "smart" people, if given that opportunity, would not take it, because their expected utility value of playing would actually be lower than the utility value of $1,000.
Other guy is correct. The value of the prize is so large as to distort the value of the prize. It would have to be more like 1 billion dollars (super rich but with many richer assholes above you for the press to focus upon). Keep the ticket price constant ($1000). Now the odds are not 1:1,000,000,000 but 1:1,000. So I can only buy one ticket. No problem. I would take that bet as would anybody else with 5 or more figures saved and basic math skills (unless they did not - for good reason - want a billion dollars).
Answer the subject line's question. Do you have a degree in computer science or computer information systems? No, of course not: You're yet another dime-a-dozen slashdot wannabe computer expert (not, not minus those degrees slacker. You're no expert by any means, though you certainly play one, courtesy of google university online, lol, and wikipedia college too, rotflmao!). Care to show us how to determine the probability of picking say, a straight flush, out of all the possible cards there is in a deck of 52 cards, douchenozzle? Without your having taken discrete math, good luck, and we know you haven't done that, so quit trying to "play smart" poseur. You don't have a mathematics degree.