The Power Ball Fever, it has jumped one half billion dollars in 3 days, from a mere billion to a billion and a half. This means that somewhere out there in the land there are people spending their last dime on lottery tickets. Literally their last dime.
If I win I will give each of my kids 5 million dollars, so says one of my co workers. Her children will likely want more, but who am I to say.
Vocalizations of this fantasy of winning a billion dollars has reached the fever stage. There is so much desperation unleashed that it unnerves me. People openly saying what they will do with their winnings. Today I told someone very pointedly that I wanted to hear nothing of it. I don't want to hear of all the good works you will do with all that money. I felt as it I should say do some good works today when you don't have all that money. Be kind to someone, help someone, pray for someone think about someone. Don't reserve you goodness to the day when you have a billion for your reserved goodness will most likely be carried to your grave. Which would be a gross waste if there ever were one.
I would get a new car, a new house,a boat, I would quit my job, oh please be grateful for what you do have and think about those who are less fortunate. So yes, I think I am tiring of the Lottery noise.
I bemoan the fact that the State ever undertook to ply the vices of the people for a revenue source. Yes there was a time in this nations history when gambling was considered a vice, not an innocent
form of entertainment. And for many today it remains so. And make no mistake about it lottery is gambling on high octane. A billion and a half is still real money.
I can't get a handle on it, in a nation with wealth that seems without end we look about and find that amongst us are people who are desperate. That is the scary part. We have big screens, and little screens and yet we can't keep our homes warm and our children fed. We need the government to do that for almost 100 million of us. And fully one half of that 100 million is under the poverty line.
But that is not the scariest part, the scariest part is the middle class which has been evaporating like an ice cube dropped on the sidewalk in mid July. It was there just a minute ago and now it is gone. The only remnants of a once vibrant section of the economy is centralized into that section of the population that works for the government, cops, firemen, teachers and those lucky enough to still have a job. The remainder of that class has been pushed out to lesser paying position in retail and security. Security has become a growth industry. Even the Government has done its part there, hiring almost 65000 persons to work for airport security. We have a severe disconnect and no one speaks to that anymore. We no longer even speak of the nobility of work.
And then there is the hospitality sector --which is everything from flipping burgers to making beds in a fancy hotel. So for all the talk of added jobs and the end of the recession, curiously tied into Hillary's run for the Oval Office I find myself left wondering. Is it real or not. The pitch of lottery fever leads me to believe that I am right.
From where I sit it seems a cruel deception. I do not see added income and the only job production I see are of the lesser paying part time variety. I increasingly hear of people talking of their personal difficulties in achieving their ends. I see students becoming saddled with education debt as parents make no pretense as to their ability to pay and simply tell their children "you are on your own". I routinely hear of people who lost their jobs 5 years ago , who have stripped their 401Ks clean and have not paid on the house in several years, just to survive. It is out of this situation that I perceive the unhealthy reliance on pie in the sky dreams of hitting the lottery. Oh, for sure there will be a lucky winner, but for sure there will be tales of some down on his luck guy who took his savings account and bought 3000 tickets and who now can't pay the rent.
Our national deficit has done wonders for keeping this thing afloat, without it we would really be in the doo as they say. I can foresee a situation where our civil contract would be rended were it not for the idea of deficit spending . With no social contract our entire country would be Baltimore after Freddie Gray
So I suppose it is not such a terrible thing to view the billion dollar jackpot for what it does, it gives some form of hope, no matter how delusional, to millions of people. And I mean how delusional are you when you hit the credit card for a grand to buy lotto tickets ( according to my lottery agent friend) this is not at all uncommon.. So with that Hope in mind which will change their otherwise drab existence, I will get to listen to the Hope and Change President talk about the legacy that he has wrought. Somehow my view of it will probably not coincide with his.
My hope is that we change.