MIracles happen!

A mother used her life savings to pay for her daughter's breast cancer treatment. The day after her child 'rang the bell,' she won $2 million on a scratch-off.

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Taylor Ardrey
Sat, April 8, 2023 at 3:55 PM EDT



Monti Young fills out her Powerball numbers as she buys a ticket at Circle News Stand on November 28, 2012 in Hollywood, Florida. The jackpot for Wednesday's Powerball drawing is currently at $550 million which is the richest Powerball pot ever. It is likely to rise even more as people continue to buy before tonights drawing.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• Geraldine Gimblet used her life savings to help pay for her daughter's cancer care.
  
  
• She soon become a $2 million scratch-off ticket winner, state lottery officials said.
  
  
• Gimblet's daughter said it was her last day of treatment when it happened.
  

A Florida mother who spent her life savings to help her daughter who was diagnosed with breast cancer became a millionaire after winning a scratch-off ticket.

Geraldine Gimblet, of Lakeland, Florida — about 36 miles from Tampa — bought her $2 million Bonus Cashword ticket from a gas station in the city, according to the Florida Lottery. She said that when she initially tried to purchase the specific scratch-off ticket, the clerk said that there was none left.

 

Yay, for her. Booo, for lotteries.

Lotteries are a tax on people who don't understand statistics and probabilities. But they're worse than that. Two other points:

First, the "vig" (the house advantage) is around 35%. This is larger than the maximum allowed for casinos in Nevada (25%). In fact, most games have an advantage of just a few percentage points. (Blackjack is the best; keno is the worst.)

Second is the relentless promotion of lotteries. It's necessary to keep people gambling and to attract new players. The state is in the business of enticing and fooling people to part them from their money. Needed money, since there is an inverse correlation between household income and lottery spending. The lottery is a scam and is predatory. Yet, almost every state has one. (Utah, Alaska, Alabama, Nevada, and Hawaii are the exceptions.)

If there was really truth in advertising, it would be called the Less-You-Know-the-More-You-Pay Tax.

 

From time to time when I'm fueling in my car I get a few lottery tickets. Average spent 3 to 5 $.
So far maybe few times I got back like 2$ in 40 years of occasional playing.
Maybe should have spent it on charity, add it to what I usually send to different charities that I volunteer at so see first hand how its being spent.

 

I'm a recent lottery quitter. Played them on and off for nearly 50 years. No prizes over $100. The "big day" is not gonna come.

I've been spending $10 a week for quite a while. I decided that $500 a year belongs to me, not to the Provincial Government that runs all the lotteries. I'll add it to the money I've saved by not paying liquor taxes for around 18 years.

PLENTY of better things I can find to spend money on, other than lottery tickets. And I do. It's a blast!

 

While the odds on the different lottery games vary, here's a baseline: For the game where you pick 6 of 49 numbers, the odds of getting all six is 13.4 million-to-one. Take a Solo cup, put it on the sidewalk in front of the Empire State Building, go up to the observation deck, and without knowing which side of the building the cup is, take a quarter and toss it into the cup. Those are your odds.

The more buzzers and bells the game has, the more the money is concentrated into one jackpot, the more losing happens all around.

I'm not saying don't play. I don't care what people do with their money. But the odds....

 

Lotteries are attractive to State governments for the exact same reasons alcohol, tobacco, and now cannabis taxes are attractive; these are all politically safe sources of revenue that don't entail raising taxes. Unfortunately the result is that the State has an interest in encouraging self destructive behavior that itself has an economic cost as well as taking a serious toll on human well-being. Feeding potential addiction for profit is immoral but I don't suppose any Legislature is likely to see it that way.

 

I agree with this, with a little twist on the issue of smoking.

I grew up during a time when smoking was utterly normal. Then, as I lived my life, I watched it become less and less so. We all know the changes, going from ubiquitous ashtrays to smokers huddling outside in the snow to drag one. But along with those societal changes came huge increases in taxation. Not everywhere, but so much so that it made it viable for smugglers to move cigarettes from low-tax states like Virginia to high-tax states like New York. That taxation was designed to deter smoking by making it a LOT more expensive. Not unlike some European countries with gasoline.

 

Tax often doesn't work as designed. For instance, here in Ontario, half the cigarettes smoked are untaxed.- smuggled and and sold cheaply by "runners" who have regular routes. I think the Province is losing $5 billion in tax revenue a year, here. Thanks, Premier Ford. Another great job!

 

This should not be happening, Especially in the wealthiest society in history.

 

I don't object to so-called sin taxes. I agree that they need to be set low enough to avoid wholesale smuggling. I do object to my government's intensive advertising campaigns encouraging alcohol consumption and gambling.

 

I think they should be VERY high, here - as they are, to help pay for the cost of medical treatment for so much smoking-related disease. What I object to is the lack of enforcement. There was a symbolic police checkpoint set up on the highway from the local First Nations Reserve some few years ago. It was there for a few days. They netted some van-loads and car trunks of cigarettes and fined people. One woman was incensed enough to write to the newspaper, because she had been stopped and her boyfriend had been assessed a fine of about $700. She thought it was grossly unfair, because he was on welfare.

Seems to have been a token effort. Haven't heard of any checks in years. Provincial Government is cutting back on everything, crying the blues -- and missing out on $5 Billion a year from this source alone. Maybe the new cannabis stores on every block (they've licensed SO many) are compensating somewhat. I don't know. It's a mess. If there was a tax on incompetence...

 

Mostly, they don't work at all, it seems. Or worse - e.g. Philippines under Duterte.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_drug_war

Is there ANYTHING that really works?

 

It depends on the product being banned.

Prohibition actually lowered alcohol consumption, but it created a whole class of criminal and a sense that breaking the law was okay.

I believe the treatment of marijuana has had a similar, though less dramatic, effect.

Prohibitions work if the product in question is difficult for individuals to produce and transport. This is why it works (largely) on tobacco. You can't grow, cure, and formulate tobacco for individual use. But anyone can for marijuana. (Smuggling cigarettes produced and sold legally is a separate and difficult issue. If jurisdictions evened out the taxation of them, smuggling would disappear.)

Guns a a great example. Countries who limit the private possession of firearms see almost no gun violence. This includes countries like Australia, who had a gun culture but went after it 25 years ago and have largely succeeded. Guns are hard (for now) to manufacture individually. They're also hard (for now) to smuggle.

Fentanyl is easy to manufacture and even easier to smuggle. Banning it has little effect.

If you threw out all the criminal law around drugs, drug use would rise. But would that be as harmful to society as the so-called 'war on drugs'?

 

Actually, you can, here in Canada - or you once could, anyway. Back in the day (early 70's) I did, in my garden. I knew I could legally make my own wine and beer, so why not smokes? I checked with the government guys in Ottawa and at first they acted like it was an enquiry from Mars. When they found I was for real, they sent me a lengthy letter that said basically as long as it was a small quantity for one household and not sold - nobody would be knocking on my door. I don't know if it's the same today. After me, they might have plugged the loophole.

I grew, I think two or three tobacco plants, from seed I bought at a seed specialty store. They take up room, in a garden. I harvested, dried and chopped the leaves in the fall. The results were uh - smokable, but nowhere near enjoyable. Never did it again. Left smoking behind me in 1977.

 

I don't think so. As long as tax exists, so will smuggling - at least in Canada. Here, the opportunity for smugglers starts with the supply of un-taxed cigarettes, such as those supplied to First Nations Reserves. Some of those, plus most of the huge quantity of untaxed cigartettes made on the Reserves, make their way into smugglers' vehicles and boats.

Cigarette manufacturing has become a thriving industry on the Rez. Some nice houses going up, there, all the time. Cigarettes may be manufactured legally, tax-free, for sale to Native people. It's when the smokes get OFF First Nations Land and into the hands of non-Natives that the smokes become "illegal." There's a second "tax benefit" with these. The cigarette-making enterprises employ First Nations people. Their earnings on the Reserve are not subject to ANY income taxes, Federal or Provincial. Best employee benefit --- EVER!

I used to visit a Reserve fairly frequently, for cultural events and for its half-dozen or so good art and craft stores. Over the years, the number of smoke-shops crept up -from ground zero. Last time I was there, I was told the total was now 112 of them.

 

I don't understand. You disagree, then describe a situation I did not.

If cigarettes cost the same everywhere--and they would if there weren't such differences in taxation--there would be no incentive to smuggle them. But they don't, so they get trafficked.

 

You mean -- like we should tax the First Nations? That's clearly not gonna fly.