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What winning the lottery can buy now...


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HOLA441

When growing up and remembering when the national lottery first started in 1994, between me and my friend on our paper round we used to talk about what we could buy if we won the lottery. Conversations would range between the typical mansions, cars and boats and even the lesser prize amounts seemed life changing.

Fast forward until today, and the big advertisement for EuroMillions tonight apart from the jackpot is that they'll be 13 UK millionaires (for Friday the 13th presumably).

This is also putting aside that the costs of playing has increased while the probability of winning anything has increasingly dwindled over the years.

It made me think looking on rightmove the other day and stumbling across a 4 bed in West Acton, London on at £965k.


http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-69396524.html

It just reminds me how ridiculous things are when even a impossibly minuscule chance at winning a big prize in the lottery would get you a house the average blue collar worker could afford a couple of decades ago.

IMG_3670.PNG

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anyone playing the lottery is a MUG, do some digging into previous winners and their connections with Camelot or whatever they're called now :ph34r:

 

or just play along and believe it could be you :lol:

 

Edit: nice find on the house btw, you gonna go balls deep? I'm guessing you're planning to convert the kitchen into another bedroom and bang it in the smallprint somewhere (catering available offsite) then ram it full of dumb youngster renter scum. If not, tip us the nod and I'm gonna go for it, that loftspace has got my attention, can already see an Asian family crammed in up there they aint as bothered about the lack of light in my experience bless em. Business is business.

 

 

Edited by thewig
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3 minutes ago, Shrink Proof said:

In some quarters the Lottery is called the Stupid Tax. The more stupid you are, the more you pay.

in Camelot HQ its plastered all over the walls as their company ethos! I win £2 a week on the lottery, every single week.

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8 minutes ago, thewig said:

Edit: nice find on the house btw, you gonna go balls deep? I'm guessing you're planning to convert the kitchen into another bedroom and bang it in the smallprint somewhere (catering available offsite) then ram it full of dumb youngster renter scum. If not, tip us the nod and I'm gonna go for it, that loftspace has got my attention, can already see an Asian family crammed in up there they aint as bothered about the lack of light in my experience bless em. Business is business.

 

Come on thewig you think you are a savvy biznessdude but tripped over an amateur mistake. How could you overlook the spacious chimney pots suitable for the foster child sector?

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1 hour ago, Shrink Proof said:

In some quarters the Lottery is called the Stupid Tax. The more stupid you are, the more you pay.

The lottery is actually an excellent example of how mathematics can let you down in predicting real world behavior.

Even though the expected "profit" of buying a ticket is negative, it is rationale to buy a ticket for a big part of the population. You need to take into account peoples age, qualifications and so on.

For many disadvantaged people in our society, buying lottery tickets is a perfectly rational thing to do. Don't sneer at them.

Note, please don't try to smoke me with complex maths. It won't work!

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10 hours ago, thewig said:

anyone playing the lottery is a MUG, do some digging into previous winners and their connections with Camelot or whatever they're called now :ph34r:

I'm intrigued... Link or stats?

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4 minutes ago, Grab_Some_Popcorn said:

I'm intrigued... Link or stats?

I'm not going to spoonfeed you hence 'do some digging' if you're interested, I can't remember the specifics but this was probably one of them http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4045212/Former-Camelot-employee-hacked-databases-bosses-2-5million-forged-ticket.html

 

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20 hours ago, Uncle_Kenny said:

The lottery is actually an excellent example of how mathematics can let you down in predicting real world behavior.

Even though the expected "profit" of buying a ticket is negative, it is rationale to buy a ticket for a big part of the population. You need to take into account peoples age, qualifications and so on.

For many disadvantaged people in our society, buying lottery tickets is a perfectly rational thing to do. Don't sneer at them.

Note, please don't try to smoke me with complex maths. It won't work!

No one should sneer at them..I get that and agree. 

I subject my local co-op twice a week by positively not buying a lottery ticket - ie "and no lottery ticket today....that's another £2 saved"

Occasionally they ask for my total and I say something like "£4 a week, £200 a year...so for 20 years I have saved £4000 so far.....well either that or I have lost £15m". They politely chuckle. 

Many spend way over the £4 a week who just can't really afford it....I don't sneer nor blame them or anyone. Some 'households' spend a frightening amount on scratch cards and lottery tickets. A tax on the poor. 

I make my choices and those that buy tickets make theirs. As long as we all make positive choices with out spending not lazy ones...if they do then that OK. Same with beer, fags, phones, coffee (my vice), designer clothes, holidays (me again), eating out...if it's zombie spending it's wrong but if it is a positive choice and makes you happy then that all good. 

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21 hours ago, Uncle_Kenny said:

The lottery is actually an excellent example of how mathematics can let you down in predicting real world behavior.

Even though the expected "profit" of buying a ticket is negative, it is rationale to buy a ticket for a big part of the population. You need to take into account peoples age, qualifications and so on.

For many disadvantaged people in our society, buying lottery tickets is a perfectly rational thing to do. Don't sneer at them.

Note, please don't try to smoke me with complex maths. It won't work!

I think the purchase is rational, but not because of the odds of winning.

 

11 hours ago, irrationalactor said:

If the only way to buy a house is to win the lottery then playing the lottery doesn't seem that silly.

Saving up £2 a week isn't going buy that house.

You're never going to get the house through the lottery either: much higher chance of dying from cat inhalation, or any number of other bizarre misadventures.

I do think that with £2 spent on the lottery, you get a fair return for your money in entertainment value: you get to daydream about what you would buy if you won, you get a little ritual structure in your week, and the TV show (or however they communicate the winning numbers these days) acquires that extra frisson of anticipation. I think Irrationalactor is absolutely correct though, in that the value of those entertainment benefits increase the more unpleasant your real life is.

22 hours ago, Shrink Proof said:

In some quarters the Lottery is called the Stupid Tax. The more stupid you are, the more you pay.

I think the original quote is "A lottery is a taxation upon all the fools in creation" (Henry Fielding, 1732) - but, as above, I don't agree.

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