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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: freelyhovering who wrote (111898)	5/26/2009 12:58:38 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541927

>> give them a chance [with lotto]<< It just is not a very likely one and a cynically bad payout ratio. I saw an interesting statistic: The chance of winning the lotto can be visualized as being the only one picked out of a field of 50 baseball stadiums filled with fans. Those aren't very good odds. I'd rather take the smartest and most capable underprivileged people and give them a scholarship lotto. Using 50 x 50,000 x $5, that is $12.5 million for each $5 lotto ticket of which only $4 MM is currently paid out. About $4 MM goes to the general fund and $4 MM goes to general fund using current distribution. Assuming a college degree is $150,000 a year for the best schools in the country, with a cost of $600k for four years, it seems like a scholarship lotto with the same input would permanently change the lives of 200 people with an average ROI of $187.5 MM dollars if all the take was funneled to scholarships (based a commonly cited $1 MM per lifetime earning difference for a college degree vs. none). Let's see the current lotto top that. One of the rules would be if a college lotto winner drops out, the remaining money goes to the runners up.