Musings on Mega Lotteries

Each time one of the big US lotteries reach stupidly-high prize levels, it causes me to ruminate on a number of things. I've never had illusions that I might win a meaningfully, life-changing prize, but it's still nice to think of the possibilities. This time, as the prize number became more and more stratospheric, it caused me - prompted or of my own accord, a number of things.

I'm kind of a statistics geek - not so much from the standpoint of being massively into specific statistics but more from the standpoint of being amused by people's habits and interests. I've got to think that things like mega lotteries cause all sorts of interesting queries to end up in Google's data banks. It would be sort of interesting to see what lottery-related questions are asked, how they're asked, how frequently they're asked and how the relative frequencies change as new numbers about the size of the prize come out. For instance, did people ask questions like (because, obviously, these are questions that occurred to me):

• What are the community-property rules of my state and how do they relate to lottery winnings?
• How often do married lottery winners end up divorced after winning?
• Is the post-winning divorce rate any higher than the average divorce rate or the divorce rates of couples who've experienced severe economic stress?
• Of those divorces:
  • how many are prompted by the lottery winnings (i.e., bickering over what to do with it, etc.)
  • how many are simply enabled by the lottery winnings. That is, are they couples who would have otherwise divorced, sooner, but didn't have the financial wherwithal to do so (say because they couldn't afford to live on their respective individual incomes or whatever) or were they simply not quite in love any more, but stayed together because they couldn't think of a compelling enough reason to break up.

You're probably noticing a theme, here. Yeah: I'm married. So, I think like a married guy. I can't honestly say that, after winning a huge jackpot, I'd still be long-married afterwards. Not that I'm actively seeking dissolution of my marriage, but money does weird things....

The other thing(s) that come up are peoples' reactions to lottery moneys they never receive.

More than a few people, after the lottery has ended with a winner (that isn't them), express things akin to sour grapes. There's a tendency to look at whether the winner(s) were deserving of the prize awarded. Often times, it's simple matter of being able to identify with the winners (e.g., "that's why I never win: I don't live in a mobile home"). Other times it's along the lines of "he already had money - he didn't need to win that prize" (because, hey, there's anyone out there that needs $640Mn - especially more than the person complaining does)

Whatevs. Not like someone esle's winning the jackpot diminishes me for having not won. Got other things to worry about (some might say, "clearly, given the bulleted list of questions, above").

The most baffling thing, however are the people who seem to think that certain prizes aren't worth winning. It's compounded by who some of these people are. Case in point was a couple years ago, just after one of the big lotteries had paid out a $300Mn+ prize. At any rate,  I'd had an extra dollar in my pocket, that day, so I opted to buy a lottery ticket. The prize in that day's drawing was "only" 15Mn. The woman behind the counter asked me why I was wasting my money on such a small payout. All I could think was, "fucker, 15Mn is more than you're gonna see in a lifetime (as a 7Eleven clerk, she couldn't have been clearing much more than minimum-wage): who are you to turn up your nose at 'only' $15Mn?" I mean, seriously, while even a $1Mn lottery winning wouldn't necessarily be life-altering to the point of allowing me to retire early, etc, it would still allow me to pay off my mortgage. Given that my mortgage sets me back $30K/year, even if I changed nothing else about my life, I could either just piss away $30K/yr on things like vacations and "toys", or, I could take a job I really liked rather than one that ones dictated by financial needs, etc.. So, yeah, it's "only" $1Mn - I just don't how you could ever possibly question why anyone would "waste" $1 on such a "small" prize.

Oh well, there's no accounting for what goes through other peoples heads.

Food or Toy?

So, after a nice, spicy dinner, a bit of sweet often goes well. For me, a frequently-preferred sweet is a nice, freshly-peeled navel orange. So, I reached into the fruit bowl and gathered one up. As I started for the living room, I realized, "oh, it's time for my evening meds." Not wanting to carry the orange with me back to the kitchen, I tossed the orange at my couch before heading back to the other end of the house. Well, my aim was a touch high (actually, I was trying not to clobber my cat with it as he lazed away on my couch). The orange hit the top of one of the back-rest pillows and then started rolling downward and off the couch. It tumbled to the floor and rolled its way to a stop along the one wall. Cira had seen all of this transpire and was immediately captivated by it. I was just going to fetch it up after taking my meds, but decided that it wasn't worth risking her trying to treat it like a chew toy in my absence. So, I reached down, plucked it up and tossed - properly, this time - onto the couch where it came to a stop next to my lounging cat.

I'm not sure Cira knows whether this orange is food or a ball: either way, she's not happy it's not in her possession. When I came back from the kitchen, she was sitting in front of the couch, head cocked, staring intently at the mysterious object and whining. The whining was not diminished by my picking it up to peel it.

Once I finished peeling it, I figured, "offer her a piece so she knows it's food and not some toy I'm withholding from her." Turns out that oranges are one more bit of human food she's not sure she wants to accept as beggings.

Stupid daig.

Hooray for Pay-day?

In the era of electronic banking, pay-day is less a joyful occasion than an exercise in financial whiplash. You wake up in the morning to find the joyful message that you're suddenly flush with fundage. And then, you log into your bank's website and start paying bills. If it's the mortgage pay-cycle, you're pretty much wiped-out by the time you're done.

Hooray.

Life in the Sticks

I read articles of righteous indignation and am rarely surprised. I find myself unsurprised by the professionally-outraged nor by the inevitable and eminently predictable comments such articles spawn.

What makes it all so inevitable and predictable? Ignorance. The professionally-outraged earn their sheckles by being outraged. The commenters are generally people seeking to be outraged so that they can vent their righteous indignation and bile. None are really seeking to think or do anything beyond feeling a knee-jerk emotion. And, invariably, the articles and commentary are based on a very limited view of the outrageous situation.

Life in unencorporated areas carries risks. Heavy on the risks are lack of proximity to EMS. Often times, what EMS there is is either purely voluntary or, as in this case, "subscription" based. Again, that's if there's any EMS to be had, at all. It's been this way since before the founding of the country. What works in cities, suburbs and commuter-communities "in the country" just doesn't work in areas of extremely low population densities. It works even less well as the cost of providing EMS goes ever skyward.

Firetrucks and ambulances typically cost six-figures for used equipment. Training for staffs can only be ammortized over a small groups of citizens. Insurance costs, which our litigious society has made increasingly necessary and ever more costly, have to be born by a much smaller pool of contributors.

And, speaking of the issue of insurance, providing service to people who haven't paid their "subscription" can be grounds for an EMS unit losing their insurance coverage - either by straight-up revocation or because their rates became untenable after doing so. So, yeah, it was "heartless" of those mean firemen to standby and do nothing. However, it would have been even more "heartless" for them to have done something that would have cost their entire services-subscribing community from losing their fire services.

Do I think Glen Beck & Co. are utter douchebags for kicking the Cranicks while they are down? Yup, sure do. Do I think the fire department did wrong? Nope: not under the conditions they have to operate under.