The company is going to expand its operations
The company is planning to expand its operations. itate with them they just start like calling you names and stuff like that I don’t like it it’s not okay
Thank you, everyone, for joining us for Wisecrack Live! It’s me, Michael Burns, with producer Henry.
We’re talking about the famous Flu Game played by Michael Jordan in Utah. There are disputes about whether he had the flu, ate poisoned pizza, or was just hungover and hiding it. Hopefully, this stream will be my cold/sinus infection game as I’m feeling a little bit congested this week.
We put up a short video on education in Florida and talked about Ron DeSantis and Louis Altazer. We received some comments calling me a groomer for saying negative things about Ron DeSantis. I decided I didn’t like the vibe and had a talk with it.
Jean-quote Levegan asked why I don’t just act fully sick. I feel like if I act fully sick and go too hard, God will punish me and make me feel sick because I still have a type of ingrained Catholicism in my soul.
Anyway, thanks for tuning in and for your support - it means a lot to us. Henry: “I like getting up in the morning to make coffee and a light breakfast before my first meeting of the day.”
Vox: “Henry, what’s your wake-up time?”
Henry: “My wake-up time is my fiance’s, so 4 AM.”
John: “John way to flex on us, 12 PM.”
We Got 8:30, Another 8:30, Between 6 and 6:45
Azalea Jane: “In theory, 7 AM. In practice, 10 AM.” your day?
Gary Busey says that the ancient man may have looked up early to do the work of a human being, and he suggests that one should concentrate like a Roman and do tasks like it’s the last thing they’ll do in their life. He also mentions the contemporary Roman way of life, which involves sleeping in, getting espresso and pastries, and eating lavish lunches. When asked what time he goes to bed, he says typically after 11 PM, but sometimes he’ll sleep midday. He also admits to napping throughout the day. James Buchanan adds that he doesn’t think Marcus Aurelius was working a wage, and he has a 1099 formula. He also points out that the advice from Marcus Aurelius is taking the dominant ideology of the world and projecting it back into history. Gary Busey then suggests starting one’s day with a morning routine that allows them to own their day. The kingdom is really gross, man. The rush is so messy and swamp-like, that’s so sad. I was so ready to win today. Okay, okay, sorry, okay, good. I would have thought that was fake if Johnny did that; anyone would have thought that was totally, totally, totally fake. I’m getting out of my intoxicated buzz, yeah.
If you’re born in 1984, that means you’re in your late 20s, that’s what I think; that’s what I think. Gambling, which clearly I haven’t done enough, I grew up Mormon, okay give me a break. You scratch off the latex and see if you won. You don’t win, I didn’t win, it’s actually really satisfying, but it’s kind of messy. You also have smaller lotteries that are usually more frequent, but they have smaller jackpots and better odds.
Anyway, the point is there are all sorts of lotteries. Speaking of odds, what are my odds of winning the big jackpot? According to one statistician who crunched all the numbers, my odds for winning on this ticket is like one in 302 million, which, let’s be honest, no one really knows what that means. I don’t know what that means. What is that 302 million? That’s a bigger number than my brain can fathom, so let’s do a visualization.
Imagine you have six bathtubs and each of them is filled to the brim with rice - 4.5 million grains of rice, in fact. How did we calculate that number? We actually did an analysis to see how many grains of rice would fit into these bathtubs. 4.5 million. So you’ve got 66 bathtubs and they’re all full of rice, and one of those grains of rice is painted gold. Now close your eyes, walk through the field, and thrust your hand into one of these 66 bathtubs and pick out a grain of rice and maybe you found the golden grain. But yeah, those are my odds of winning tomorrow night. Not as fun to think of it like that.
This works even if you buy a ton of tickets or use the same numbers over and over again. None of this really does anything meaningful to change your odds. Mr. Beast did this great video a while back where he bought a million dollars worth of scratch off tickets and lost about 300,000. wildlife department which is like the people who make sure that the forests and the rivers are clean and like the animals are taken care of so that’s really cool
Ok, so we’re done with this part of the video. The lottery exists and it’s big, but we all know that you’ll probably lose. My bigger question is why does the government have a monopoly on this gambling game? That’s the question I’m leaving with you, and you can come visit it anytime you want to spend more money on the lottery or gambling.
It’s a natural thing that humans love to do, so if they’re going to do it anyway, why not use that as a game to generate revenue for the government? But that begs the question of what do they actually use the money for?
Luckily, there’s data for that. Let’s use a giant lottery called Powerball as an example. Let’s make the numbers easier and say that everyone has bought tickets and the big pot has totaled up to $100 million. Of that, $40 million is for the jackpot and the remaining $10 million goes to all the smaller prizes.
But under the hood something else is going on. If you look at all the billboards for the Powerball at this moment, it will advertise it as $67 million for a reason. Only 50% of all the money generated goes to the people who bought the tickets. So, where does the other 50% go?
Six percent of that $100 million goes to all the gas stations and convenience stores who sell the tickets. Nine percent of the $100 million goes to pay all the people and expenses associated with running and advertising the lottery. That leaves us with $35 million of the original $100 million which, according to Powerball’s website, goes to “good causes supported by the lotteries”.
What does that mean? What are good causes? The Powerball website won’t tell you much, but research shows that from state to state the definition of good causes changes. In a lot of states, this money goes to fund public education budgets, which is great. But then they reduce the existing budget so that it ends up basically being the same number, which means the lottery doesn’t actually give any extra money to the education system.
In Colorado, the state spent $14 million on their parks and wildlife department, which is the people who make sure that the forests and the rivers are clean and the animals are taken care of. So that’s really cool. 60s and 70s states started to realize that they could make a lot of money off of it and they also started to realize that they could use the money to fund public programs so it’s not just a way to make money it’s also a way to fund things like education and health care and infrastructure and all of those things
That’s cool! I like that the government uses lottery money to fund public programs like education, health care, and infrastructure. It’s not just a way to make money, but also a way to fund important initiatives. Wow, the U.S. federal and local lottery revenue in 2020 was around 27 billion dollars! That could pay for a lot of stuff. It’s interesting that lotteries were illegal for a long time, but now states are taking advantage of the money they can make from it, as well as the money they can use to fund public programs.