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THE LOTTERY AND THE POOR….Poor people spend a much larger chunk of their income on lottery tickets than rich people. Why? Because they’re dumb and don’t realize the odds are bad? Because they’re desperate and therefore more willing to take a chance on a big payback? Because they’re too poor to afford better forms of entertainment?

Maybe. But apparently the mere feeling of being poor, as opposed to any objective result of actually being poor, is also enough to get people buy lottery tickets. George Loewenstein, a neuroeconomist at Carnegie Mellon University, performed a study of low-income riders at a Greyhound bus station in Pittsburgh. Each person was given $5 to participate in a survey, and then told they could take some or all of the money in lottery tickets. But not everyone was given exactly the same survey:

We randomly assigned subjects to either feel relatively poor or relatively rich by having them complete demographic questions that included an item on annual income. The group made to feel poor was asked to provide its income on a scale that began at “less than $100,000” and went up from there, ensuring that most respondents would be in the lowest income tier. The group made to feel subjectively wealthier was asked to report income on a scale that began with “less than $10,000” and increased in $10,000 increments, leading most respondents to be in a middle tier. The group made to feel poor purchased twice as many lottery tickets (an average of 1.27) than those made to feel relatively wealthier (0.67 tickets, on average).

What this means is that lottery marketers — i.e., state governments — have a big incentive to make people feel poor because this helps them sell more tickets. Do you think they succeed? Do the lottery ads in your state make you feel poor? Is this a problem?

Via Mark Thoma, who doesn’t think the state should have any role in lotteries at all aside from regulating private operators.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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