North Carolina lawmakers have drafted legislation that would ban welfare recipients and people in bankruptcy from buying lottery tickets in the state, according to several news reports.
The bill draft would punish vendors for selling lottery tickets to someone who they know is on welfare or in bankruptcy. The lawmakers behind it believe it's counterproductive for the government to accept money from welfare recipients who are struggling to get by.
"We're giving them welfare to help them live, and yet by selling them a ticket, we're taking away their money that is there to provide them the barest of necessities," state House Majority Leader Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam (R), who is helping draft the bill, told ABC 11. Stam added that the lottery "is essentially a scam," the news outlet reported. Stam also said that some of the North Carolina lottery advertising is "just fraudulent".
Some lottery critics claim that the lottery is a tax on the poor, the uneducated, and the elderly, who are more likely to buy lottery tickets. For example, the poorest counties in North Carolina have the highest spending per capita on lottery tickets.
Lottery ticket buyers have almost no chance of winning the jackpot. However, lottery sales around the country have been breaking records.
and they're going to enforce this HOW, exactly?? O_o how is the poor random cashier supposed to know someone is on welfare unless they are serving their close, personal friend and know for a fact that they are receiving assistance??
to quote a commenter on HuffPost's facebook post about this story, where i first spotted it: "What are they going to do, make them wear a patch on their clothes? How very Nazi Germany."
da source
The bill draft would punish vendors for selling lottery tickets to someone who they know is on welfare or in bankruptcy. The lawmakers behind it believe it's counterproductive for the government to accept money from welfare recipients who are struggling to get by.
"We're giving them welfare to help them live, and yet by selling them a ticket, we're taking away their money that is there to provide them the barest of necessities," state House Majority Leader Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam (R), who is helping draft the bill, told ABC 11. Stam added that the lottery "is essentially a scam," the news outlet reported. Stam also said that some of the North Carolina lottery advertising is "just fraudulent".
Some lottery critics claim that the lottery is a tax on the poor, the uneducated, and the elderly, who are more likely to buy lottery tickets. For example, the poorest counties in North Carolina have the highest spending per capita on lottery tickets.
Lottery ticket buyers have almost no chance of winning the jackpot. However, lottery sales around the country have been breaking records.
and they're going to enforce this HOW, exactly?? O_o how is the poor random cashier supposed to know someone is on welfare unless they are serving their close, personal friend and know for a fact that they are receiving assistance??
to quote a commenter on HuffPost's facebook post about this story, where i first spotted it: "What are they going to do, make them wear a patch on their clothes? How very Nazi Germany."
da source
It has been a Godwin day.
So let's see some Kitlers.
This is even ignoring the impossibility of enforcing such a law. And then by shifting responsibility to the vendors I can just imagine the horror stories of being denied a lottery ticket because someone "looks poor."
I also love the line "...we're taking away their money that is there to provide them the barest of necessities," Yes, gods forbid the poor should have even one small luxury to brighten their day. They only deserve to barely subsist. No luxuries for you! Not even a $1 lottery ticket!
Just fuck it, man. Fuck it through the floor. At this rate, my marriage--my fiance' is English, so I'll be moving to the UK--can't happen fast enough.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
menpeople, sillyHope is a necessity.
Especially when you've only got "the barest of necessities."
A lot of laws are never enforced - they're essentially there to make the news, to send a message, to give politicians a platform to say "I wish people would stop doing X" even though there is nothing they can do about it. No need to invoke Hilter.
I recall a radio program I listened to one day a year or so ago. It was describing a situation in some high-poverty developing country---seems some enterprising bank had put together a program to encourage its poor clientele to start and maintain savings accounts.
It did this by creating a sort of lottery. I can't remember the specific mechanism, but basically putting a certain amount of money into the account also got you an entry in this weekly or monthly drawing the bank had, where one of the account-holders would win a cash prize. I believe it might've been some fraction of the interest paid out to all the participating accounts that got withheld to form the prize purse, or might've been just paid for out of the bank's profits as an expense undertaken to drum up business.
Anyway the effect was "put your money in an account here and get free lottery tickets for these drawings we have." So that same yearning for hope and dreams and the possibility of winning a prize got used as an incentive to maintain a savings account, rather than as incentive to spend a dollar or five every time you go to the gas station.
And it was hugely popular, and got plenty of people on the road to savings and financial security, and then the lottery people got pissed that it was sucking at their market share and got it shut down.
But seriously. You want to stop poor people from spending welfare money on lottery tickets? Offer them some other way to get what they buy the things for.
try to get rid of the cause- poverty and exclusion- not the symptom.
Many people (even intelligent people with a steady income and a realistic understanding of their chances of winning) enjoy buying lottery tickets and scratch-offs. Some people think it's fun to try to win, and worth a dollar or two for the chance and a few minutes of entertainment.