I did not watch the State of the Union last night, but I'm 99.99% sure he didn't talk about this problem...
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on consumer spending, the lowest class spends 10% of their income on lottery tickets. No you didn't read that wrong, but read it again, just to make sure.
With all of the talk about income and social inequality, don't you think that this is part of the problem? With the exception of poker (which actually requires skill) gambling is a mathematical certainty that you will eventually lose money. I've told you numerous times that wealth creation is a function of mathematics, not greed or poor government policy. You are responsible, not the government.
If you want to isolate at least one factor between the rich and the poor it could definitely be this 10% factor. One gives 10% for retirement, along with a company match from their employer, which also in turn saves them money on taxes. The other completely pisses away 10% of their income on lottery tickets, which is essentially a form of entertainment. What do you think the end result will be?
My first summer job out of high school I saw this in full effect. The guys I worked with talked about lottery tickets like they were going out of style. I never even had to ask them how much they spent on the lotto since they freely offered the info in their discussions. I ran the calculations for one guy and figured that if he had just put that lotto money into a retirement plan with the company he could retire a millionaire by the time he was 65. I showed this to him and he promptly told me, "You're full of shit!". Because that's what I do! I walk around and show bullshit figures from my magic bullshit machine (calculator) so that I can help people for no money. This was the same guy that told me I needed to stop working through break time because it made everybody else look bad. This was also the same guy that smoked a pack of cigarettes and drank a 12 pack of beer EVERY DAY (I wonder why his hands shook). I didn't even bother making that calculation for him...
-CC
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