randomusername8472

I'm wondering about this too, but from a different angle. I live in a rich country with relative stability. But my countries political direction is all about "fuck poor people, fuck public services".

So I'm incentivised to save money myself. I grew up really poor and I'm lucky I broke out of poverty and helped my family too. But we're still a long way from financial security and any number of emergencies could knock us back into generational poverty.

Functionally, my partner and I live off about £15k per year (and we live very comfortably on that, but there's not much fat left to trim). I'd love to give everything else to charity but doing so would a) be committing myself to work until I'm 67 minimum and b) be eroding my own families economic security.

I don't understand how someone can commit to giving away everything above a normal salary a year. Unless it is an emotive decision rather than logical. Or they already have significant assets or security in another form (in which case it's a bit disingenuous to imply they live off $32k as in reality they live off their significant assets).

Having said all that, I think it's amazing and I live this guy's work. I just don't see how giving go charity is an effective social mechanism for most people who don't yet themselves have a very high level of economic security.

Edit to add: this is why, in principle, I support "charity work" being funded by a higher tax rate. I can't guarantee a charity will be their if I need it but if my country is stable and my country is socially altruistic then I can hopefully depend on government funded services if I'm on hard times.

Giving money to charity is only worth it IMO once you can guarantee you'll never need that money for your own survival. Because the charity might not be there when you need it.

Hmm, isn't this more like OP saying "A lot of people are throwing their money away by playing the lottery, because they think the lottery is fun. So instead of them just throwing it away for that fun, we let them save it and give them the same fun."

It's obviously not as good as investing properly, but I'd wager that no dollar that goes towards the lottery is a dollar that was otherwise going to be wisely invested.

So for people who want to play a lottery there choices are now:

- Play normal lottery, lose $2, gain ridiculously small chance of winning,

- Play this lottery, keep $2, gain ridiculously small chance of winning.

This isn't taking money from people who were going to put £2 a week into investments.

This is trying to get those people who were putting £2 a week into the lottery, still giving them the chance of winning the lottery, but also letting them keep most of their £2.

No one is playing the lottery with money they'd be putting in investments. People who do want to play the lottery would be better to play this lottery, as they will be provably better off by doing so.

Obviously the optimum solution is to educate everyone on why playing the lottery is stupid, or just outright ban lotteries.

But that's never going to happen. I think convincing people to play the lottery and actually save money at the same time is a pretty good solution, for the system we have to work with.

Technically, isn't that Mississippi state exploiting human psychology to generate funding, instead of just implementing a fairer but 'boring' method of taxation?

Poor people are more likely to be less educated and spend a higher proportion of their income on lottery tickets. I'll bet rich people in Mississipi were more than happy with the lottery approach, knowing it means lower taxes for them and poorer families being tricked into paying even more money into the government but not minding because it's not labelled a tax.

Yeah, same.