The View from the West

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Lotteries levy the tax when we buy a dream

By: Tom Oleson

Posted: 11/7/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

WE buy lottery tickets only partly because we are duped by government advertising into thinking that we might actually win. Mostly, we buy them because we are slothful, greedy daydreamers. No one knows this better than I.

We are slothful because, if we hit the "big one," we can tell the editor what to do with his/her job and spend the rest of our lives lounging around drinking beer in our wife-beaters or halter tops -- your preference -- some place where it's warm and the natives are friendly.

We are greedy because the "big one" these days usually offers more money than any person ever really needs in a lifetime -- the jackpot for yesterday's Lotto Max was $50 million, and the lottery also offered, for the small-timers who don't truly dare to dream, ten prizes of $1 million. Who, aside from me, needs that much money?

And we are daydream believers because every week -- several times a week, in fact -- we walk up to the carnie selling lottery tickets and buy some. We expectantly check the paper the next day, only to be disappointed, in the full knowledge that about the best odds of winning in one of the big lotteries is one in 14 million.

That's just a statistic, of course, but when you factor in Seguro Ndabene of Airdrie, Alberta, the odds may be getting even worse. Ndabene, who, judging by his photographs in the newspapers, dresses quite well, has won lotto prizes of $57,000, $100,000, $1 million and, most recently, $17 million.

And we thought we only had the government to compete with. Add naive to that list of what we are.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 H2

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