The Lottery – she is a ‘Changing’…

Édouard-Henri Avril wrote in his posting…
The lottery - if you allow yourself this understanding - is essentially a perverted addiction whereby a giant chunk of cheese is held up for millions of mice to see and smell. The disgusting reality is that only one mouse gorges on the prize, while millions leave the small scraps of real food for the imaginary cheese up in the sky. More unthinkable than that - it's a government regulated entity that promotes poverty, under the thinly veiled corporate slogan 'for entertainment purposes.'

I caught Édouard-Henri’s words in a post that he made about the changes that have been made to the Super 7 Looto – ooops I meant Lotto.

It seems that they have raised the cost of this particular Lotto from $2 to $5 and changed the name to “Lotto Max”. That sounds more – well simply MORE… than “Super 7”.

Odds are better now and you can make more money.

The article stated that…
“Over the past 15 years, Super 7 has sold $11.5 billion worth of tickets and paid out almost $7 billion in winnings.” (CBC link below)

Let’s see that is $11,500,000,000 have been made by selling 5,750,000,000 tickets @ $2 a ticket in 15 years.

Now if the Lottery Folk then set the price at a measly $5 – a increase of only 250% - the increase in the Income portion will be about $28,750,000,000.

They stand to make a lot more money for the simple change or a Twoonie to a simple piece of paper money – the Blue Canadian $5.

Who will notice it? I hardly every have a Five in my pocket now – it is often Tens and Twenties – and they go faster that you can imagine. $5 is as small as the other pocket change – in fact it is only two Twoonies and a Loonie (Canadian Talk for $2 and $1 coin)

Thinking this through a little further… In Canada we have about 30,000,000 people. Doing the math there has been 192 tickets bought for each Canadian over 15 years.

I know that I didn’t buy any – so some one else bought at least 383 tickets… In fact I know a lot of people that didn’t buy any... so the amount per person purchase for many people is way higher than 192 tickets over the 15 years.

But then again that is only 12.8 tickets per year per person. Not a big deal – really.

That is about the same as the church gets in its offerings on an average Sunday.

But why is it that the church doesn’t have the equivalent to $11,500,000,000 after the 15 years. Maybe people don’t give a $2 amount 12.8 times a year to the church.

Maybe we need to raise the price of Admission to the church to 250% of the amount that we ‘charged’ in the past. Can you imagine the uproar if that was suggested?

Now don’t think about the church… think about the Food Bank kind of agencies, the help the public agencies, the United Way groups that all struggle to make a go of it. The church isn’t alone.

The United Way in our area has just launched a new program and goal for this next year. Smart – very smart was the recent comment made by one of the leaders… “If you can only set aside $2 a week – that is $104 for this next year… that will help us make our Goal this year!”

Smart thinking. When I give my $2 a week and then begin to think… “That isn’t very much considering the need…” I will likely give more.

I believe it works the same at the Lottery Kiosk. $2 sure isn’t much… neither is $5… “Give me 8 tickets please.” That is 8 chances to win!

I attended an event last week that was completely supported by the OLG (Ontario Lottery and Gaming) organization. It was very good to be there and enjoy the function. We had a great time. They do it up very well!

Again… Édouard-Henri Avril wrote…
The lottery - if you allow yourself this understanding - is essentially a perverted addiction whereby a giant chunk of cheese is held up for millions of mice to see and smell. The disgusting reality is that only one mouse gorges on the prize, while millions leave the small scraps of real food for the imaginary cheese up in the sky.

I like cheese… but I know that it may not be good for me. But the fact that I could be the one that is eating the chunk of cheese that is bigger than your chunk… kind of makes me to really want it – even more.

Darn it… I am caught… just like the other ‘sniff-ers’.

Oh boy!

~ Murray Lincoln ~
www.murraylincoln.com

Source:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/09/18/super-seven.html