Friday, July 23, 2010
Arkansas Culture and Characters Gambling on economics
Posted by Max Brantley on Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:35 AM
I think I mentioned this last year because I was amused by the notion of holding a lottery to raise money for better economics education in Arkansas.
Anyway, it's back. Economics Arkansas is raffling a monster Z71 Chevy Silverado. Odds are better than the state lottery. Tickets are $100. 1,999 will be sold. (I'll leave it to you to do the math on the odds, but I think you can.)
Truck comes with a winch, by the way. Not a wench.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
I can hear DBI's 'dang' all the way down here in the Rock. He'd have bought all 1,999 had that 'wench' been real.
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There will be 2 winners (Economics Arkansas plus the winning ticket holder) and 1,998 losers. Long odds.
The odds are 100% that Economics Arkansas (assuming they sell all 1,999 chances) will 'win' $197,901 (1,999 x $99 each) less the cost of the Silverado, federal raffle tax, expense to print tickets, etc.
Maybe a better name would be 'Economics Fools of Arkansas'?
I drive a 2008 Dodge Nitro I won with a $100.00 raffle ticket. More than 2,000 fellow Texans had to lose in order for me to prove that raffles are a sure thing.
I'm a Ford man, but a prize wench is nothing to sneeze at. Since our politics and government have devolved into a reality game show, why shouldn't the Horatio Alger story be replaced with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I buy a Lottery ticket when I remember to do it...which works out to about 5 bucks bet every couple of months.
However, I have an 18 year old overachieving daughter who will go to Fayetteville this fall ONLY because she'll get 5000 bucks from the Arkansas Lottery proceeds. Hide and watch.....you all won't be sorry you didn't get a winning ticket when this state is transformed in the next 10 years by graduates who would have never got to go to college without the Lottery.
Someday the Arkansas Dumbass will be a rare sighting in the Arkansas legislature and that will make everyone of us winners.
Would you rather have the information, creativity in the deeper awareness for what makes the thinking behind the truck in motion or just the little, bitty truck itself? What are the odds that this could be articulated? How come you didhn't hold out for more infrastructure improvement?
If driven 12000 miles annually (the national average)
the carbon footprint of about 8.6 metric tons of CO2
could be considered monstrous.
“Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster they call destiny.”
John Oliver Hobbes
This is an opportunity for REAL ECONOMIC education and it's being thrown away!
Let me put our monthly household finances at risk and buy say 20 tickets for the monster Manly-Man truck. Naturally I put up $200 equity and borrow the rest.
Then, if I fail to win, the government simply gives me a bailout.
That way the free market in equity-leveraged borrowing is kept safe for the next generation, the terrorists lose and America is safe.
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I'd don't want to whiz on anybody's parade, but is this even legal? I thought the all-knowing state held a monopoly on the lottery.
scrap
I guess if they call it charitible bingo it would be legal.
In second grade the nuns at our school sent me with a fistfull of raffle tickets for the Turkey Bingo. I went all over the neighborhood and sold one 10 cent ticket at each Baptist house. I was well liked and they over looked giving the Pope money to help tell Kennedy what to do.
But one woman told me gambling was illegal and selling tickets was against the law and I should go give all the dimes back or she would call the police. This was a house that was owned by the Church of Christ on Barrow Road in LR. Can you imagine a grown woman telling a seven-year-old kid something like that? That was about when I first became leery of the Church of Christ.
I didn't believe her but I stopped selling. I took the money to the nun, she said it was illegal but don't worry cops won't arrest kids for that kind of thing.
That might have been when I first started questioning the Catholic Church on consistancy and believabilty.
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