A $640 million dollar mistake

I didn't buy a Mega-Million lottery ticket.  In fact, I have never purchased a lottery ticket (I was ask once during a previous Mega-mania event by a 7-11 clerk why I didn't want to buy one - - "Because I had 8th grade math.").  The Financial Times today has an excellent article by Edward Luce, America's Dream Unravels, that examines how the U.S. is coping and struggling with its economic transition and relative decline to others.

Luce writes the following on gambling and out economic transition:

"From Florida to California, and numerous Native American reservations in between, the impact of gambling varies.  Some show that the effect on the people around the casinos is not negative.  It can also be bad for tax revenues.  One study estimated that for every dollar a gaming house invests in an area, three are subtracted by the costs of dealing with the social effects.  Casinos may be a way of replacing some of the manufacturing jobs to China, Brazil and elsewhere.  But they are also a magnet for racketeers, pimps, drugs and those that are on the margins."

An extra $640 million could have been a magnet for innovation, creativity, sustainability.  It could have been a magnet for designing 640 new water treatment plants.  It could have funded and build 2,560 early child development centers.  It could have build 32 new bridges.  It could have paid the health care premium for 128,000 people or employed 13,000 construction workers.  It could have done so much more for our collective benefit.

Instead, the $640 million should remind us all that only the top tier remains wealthy beyond imagination.  You are not getting the new car or the big house.  You will have to go to work on Monday.  The $640 million should remind us all that the combined assets of the family that owns Walmart equal those of America's bottom 150 million people - - in an economy that is adding 200,000 jobs per month, but where average family income is stilling declining.  The $640 million should remind us that the U.S. accounted for just under a third of the world economy a decade ago, but the number is less than a quarter today.  The $640 million should remind us our plutocracy sees gambling and regressive taxation as solutions not problems.  The $640 million demonstrates our collective dishonesty in the era of austerity - - where we underfund "tomorrow" social, educational, and infrastructure programs while only thinking about and funding the "yesterday" portion of the country.  The $640 million represents a new age of bankrupt thinking and policy execution.

No, I didn't buy a lottery ticket and I never will.