h a l f b a k e r yWhy not imagine it in a way that works?
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Say the ticket costs $10, you play, you lose, but it's still
worth $5 worth of food at a local participating
merchant.
No, you can't get food with it for yourself, the homeless
person has to be registered with the local stores to turn
in these tickets. The ticket has instructions for how
to
register with participating local merchants.
I notice that the more run down areas with the most
homeless people have lots of places that sell lottery
tickets. Maybe have them do some good.
UK lottery does it
https://www.nationa...here-the-money-goes
but pays whom? [4and20, May 16 2022]
New Zealand Lotteries
https://www.communi...ttery-grants-board/
Half the incoming $ goes to community things. Not sure if "helping the homeless" one of those. [neutrinos_shadow, May 16 2022]
Buy this place...
https://www.zillow....-96753/755590_zpid/
[doctorremulac3, May 16 2022]
AND this place...
https://www.zillow....5060/16100714_zpid/
[doctorremulac3, May 16 2022, last modified May 20 2022]
or just this single house in Palo Alto.
https://www.zillow....4301/19494933_zpid/
Palo Alto is the center of Silicon Valley, but would you rather have this house or the other two? [doctorremulac3, May 16 2022, last modified May 20 2022]
Theories about the auto industry decline.
https://news.vander...-production-models/
[doctorremulac3, May 20 2022]
[link]
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Here, homeless person have my losing lottery ticket. It'll help you to feel grateful. But tell me first before I carry on my way to spend more of my money, how did you ever end up being homeless? |
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Well sir, I spent too much on gambling which led to my ruin, have a nice day. |
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Both are sure signs of bad city management and
neglect. |
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Bad city management? Please elaborate. |
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Come to Detroit. Or Youngstown. Or Baltimore. Or
Flint. Pretty self-explanatory. Poor economies driven
by local governments that had histories of wrong
decisions, too many eggs in too few economic
baskets, general corruption, ineffective markets, etc. |
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Plus the lottery in its current form is just a sort of
tax on the hopeless. Selling little rays of hope to
the poor. This at least puts a little humanity back
into the equation. |
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Don't get me wrong, you can have fun with a
lottery ticket and that's fine. A ticket now and
then, but I've seen poor folks buy pretty big stacks
of these things. |
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That's why they should teach real world financial
basics as a pre-requisite to graduating high school. |
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1- Don't get in debt, even for college. (Unless
you're going to be a doctor, in which case you're
screwed)
2- Learn a trade
3- Save your money
4- Buy a home
5- Regularly go back and review #1, the main rule
of financial survival.
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For a second there I was thinking edible tickets. |
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I just re-read it and thought the same thing. The |
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Hmm, changed it, but not much better. |
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Just like taxes, proceeds from lottery revenue should be a line-item allocation proportional to the purchases of each player. Not everyone has time/inclination to track down charities personally, although there are worse things than every person having a pet charity. |
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"Hey, if I lose I can still eat!" -- man about to spend his last 300 on Euromillions |
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I see that there are charities lotteries support, but
this is a direct link between the guy buying the
lottery ticket and the homeless person. |
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You might feel bad about loosing ten bucks, but
you've just given half of that to a needy person. |
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And yes, it would have to be food only, drug
addiction is a real problem with homeless people
and funding it would be a bad idea. I only give
food to homeless people, a sandwich or whatever's
available where I'm shopping. Unfortunately often I
get looked at like I'm nuts. |
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But back to the general idea, buying a lottery
ticket is buying a dopamine hit. You might be able
to get a better one by helping out a fellow human
being. Seems like a great consolation prize. |
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//bad city management and neglect.// |
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It's staggering how bad this is generally, I'd single out
Philadelphia, but everywhere I visit seems similar. |
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I walk to work, and to alleviate boredom I take different
routes and mentally log things that are symptoms of bad
city management. |
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At least 10% of parked cars never move. Rusted brake disks,
detritus gathered around them and other signs.
At least 10% of houses and 20% of business properties aren't
occupied, and haven't been for years. I don't know how this
situation happens, but just solving those two things would
free up so much space. I assume the empty properties are
also delinquent on property taxes, if that could be solved a
10% increase in budget could go someway toward picking up
just some of the trash. |
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You're basically pointing out how so many products sit on a shelf for a long time before being chosen, causing stores to be ten times as big as they need to be. If you can find a solution to those inefficiencies you'll win the Nobel prize in economics and improve the standard of living of most people by 50% |
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//products sit on a shelf for a long time before being chosen,
causing stores to be ten times as big as they need to be// |
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Amazon solved this. And before them, warehouse/catalog
stores like Argos. I'm not sure that's the problem I'm
describing, however. There's empty houses, business
properties and unused cars, yet prices for the residential
housing is always rising. Something odd is happening with
those empty properties, I have no idea what. |
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Housing prices around where I live are through the
roof because of covid. People working from home
saw that it
actually worked and aren't going back to the office
now that they see they can do their jobs perfectly
well without having their dumb boss breathing
down
their neck. |
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So rather than paying exorbitant prices
for houses in city centers they're moving to the
outlying areas that used to be beyond reasonable
commute distances. That's what's happening in
Silicon Valley anyway. Buy a 3 bedroom 2 bath in
Palo Alto for 4.5 million bucks or buy the same
house on the coast for 1/3rd of that and get a nice
house by the beach in Maui as well? No brainer.
Thing is, when
the Richie Riches start moving to the outlying
areas, they bring their money with them. Supply
and demand. |
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Here in Detroit they lean on the casinos and gambling dollars
they bring in to pay for what dismal city services are offered.
Too much inflexible infrastructure that was built over time,
and not enough consideration for the folks who have to live
with it. So the city shrunk and the smart ones left. |
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Things have been getting better though, finally. The street
lights were finally fixed a few years ago. |
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Detroit is a fascinating city. Once it was basically
Rome, the center of manufacturing, it's where the
planet made cars. Then the Japanese figured it
out, 70s gas crisis etc. |
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I'm not super well versed in the ups and downs of
this city, but what I've heard is pretty interesting.
Hopefully it can ascend to greatness again. |
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But the most fascinating American city I've been to
is Youngstown Ohio, formerly a big steel making
town, when the industry collapsed in the 70s so did
the city. Looked like a set for a zombie apocalypse
movie. Houses, buildings, the occasional store but
not a human being in site. It's where I experienced
my first drive through liquor store. |
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It might be a good idea to make lottery tickets out
of instant potatoes! People throw so many of them
away, so possibly they could be soaked in water to
be reconstituted and eaten by the homeless or
anyone else who is hungry. Some of those people
buy so many instant tickets I often wonder if they
have enough money for food themselves. |
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not good for germaphobes. |
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"Hey mom and dad, what's for dinner?" |
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You know, I still can't get this title right. It looks like
lottery tickets you can feed to the homeless. |
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Oh well, maybe it's just meant to me. Made out of
graham crackers or something. |
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Do these ideas stay up as longer the more people are
clicking on them to view? |
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I've been to Youngstown. It's not far from the Lordstown
auto
plant where they used to make Cobalts and HHR's when I
was responsible for transmissions for them. That plant was
actually in a book study for how not to have relations with
unions. How on earth Foxconn got conned into buying such
a hole is beyond me. My resident engineer at Lordstown
actually had to cover between two separate plants in two
separate towns. Crazy. |
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Detroit's slide started with the 60's riots that scared all of
the money out. |
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This is a fascinating subject. The link shows the
theories I've heard about the auto industry decline,
which I assume is pretty well linked to Detroit's
overall financial health. Which
gives the main answer?
Dunno, but bears some looking into. |
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An extremely complex set of circumstances involving the industrial revolutions of China and Brazil, reduced shipping costs, unions, local culture, development of advanced technology, rising and falling oil prices, federal meddling in markets, and morons at the top of GM especially but also Ford and Chevrolet. But when there's an easy answer to be had that supports my preconceptions and political agenda I'm all in! |
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