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Lottery Tickets That Feed The Homeless

Didn't win? Give the ticket to a homeless person so they can trade it for food.
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Say the ticket costs $10, you play, you lose, but it's still worth $5 worth of food at a local participating merchant.

No, you can't get food with it for yourself, the homeless person has to be registered with the local stores to turn in these tickets. The ticket has instructions for how to register with participating local merchants.

I notice that the more run down areas with the most homeless people have lots of places that sell lottery tickets. Maybe have them do some good.

doctorremulac3, May 15 2022

UK lottery does it https://www.nationa...here-the-money-goes
but pays whom? [4and20, May 16 2022]

New Zealand Lotteries https://www.communi...ttery-grants-board/
Half the incoming $ goes to community things. Not sure if "helping the homeless" one of those. [neutrinos_shadow, May 16 2022]

Buy this place... https://www.zillow....-96753/755590_zpid/
[doctorremulac3, May 16 2022]

AND this place... https://www.zillow....5060/16100714_zpid/
[doctorremulac3, May 16 2022, last modified May 20 2022]

or just this single house in Palo Alto. https://www.zillow....4301/19494933_zpid/
Palo Alto is the center of Silicon Valley, but would you rather have this house or the other two? [doctorremulac3, May 16 2022, last modified May 20 2022]

Theories about the auto industry decline. https://news.vander...-production-models/
[doctorremulac3, May 20 2022]


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Annotation:







       Here, homeless person have my losing lottery ticket. It'll help you to feel grateful. But tell me first before I carry on my way to spend more of my money, how did you ever end up being homeless?   

       Well sir, I spent too much on gambling which led to my ruin, have a nice day.
pocmloc, May 15 2022
  

       Both are sure signs of bad city management and neglect.
RayfordSteele, May 15 2022
  

       Bad city management? Please elaborate.
Voice, May 15 2022
  

       Come to Detroit. Or Youngstown. Or Baltimore. Or Flint. Pretty self-explanatory. Poor economies driven by local governments that had histories of wrong decisions, too many eggs in too few economic baskets, general corruption, ineffective markets, etc.
RayfordSteele, May 16 2022
  

       Plus the lottery in its current form is just a sort of tax on the hopeless. Selling little rays of hope to the poor. This at least puts a little humanity back into the equation.   

       Don't get me wrong, you can have fun with a lottery ticket and that's fine. A ticket now and then, but I've seen poor folks buy pretty big stacks of these things.   

       That's why they should teach real world financial basics as a pre-requisite to graduating high school.   

       1- Don't get in debt, even for college. (Unless you're going to be a doctor, in which case you're screwed)
2- Learn a trade
3- Save your money
4- Buy a home
5- Regularly go back and review #1, the main rule of financial survival.
doctorremulac3, May 16 2022
  

       For a second there I was thinking edible tickets.   

       I just re-read it and thought the same thing. The   

       title needs work.   

         

       Hmm, changed it, but not much better.
doctorremulac3, May 16 2022
  

       Just like taxes, proceeds from lottery revenue should be a line-item allocation proportional to the purchases of each player. Not everyone has time/inclination to track down charities personally, although there are worse things than every person having a pet charity.
4and20, May 16 2022
  

       "Hey, if I lose I can still eat!" -- man about to spend his last 300 on Euromillions
Voice, May 16 2022
  

       I see that there are charities lotteries support, but this is a direct link between the guy buying the lottery ticket and the homeless person.   

       You might feel bad about loosing ten bucks, but you've just given half of that to a needy person.   

       And yes, it would have to be food only, drug addiction is a real problem with homeless people and funding it would be a bad idea. I only give food to homeless people, a sandwich or whatever's available where I'm shopping. Unfortunately often I get looked at like I'm nuts.   

       But back to the general idea, buying a lottery ticket is buying a dopamine hit. You might be able to get a better one by helping out a fellow human being. Seems like a great consolation prize.
doctorremulac3, May 16 2022
  

       //bad city management and neglect.//   

       It's staggering how bad this is generally, I'd single out Philadelphia, but everywhere I visit seems similar.   

       I walk to work, and to alleviate boredom I take different routes and mentally log things that are symptoms of bad city management.   

       At least 10% of parked cars never move. Rusted brake disks, detritus gathered around them and other signs. At least 10% of houses and 20% of business properties aren't occupied, and haven't been for years. I don't know how this situation happens, but just solving those two things would free up so much space. I assume the empty properties are also delinquent on property taxes, if that could be solved a 10% increase in budget could go someway toward picking up just some of the trash.
bs0u0155, May 16 2022
  

       You're basically pointing out how so many products sit on a shelf for a long time before being chosen, causing stores to be ten times as big as they need to be. If you can find a solution to those inefficiencies you'll win the Nobel prize in economics and improve the standard of living of most people by 50%
Voice, May 16 2022
  

       //products sit on a shelf for a long time before being chosen, causing stores to be ten times as big as they need to be//   

       Amazon solved this. And before them, warehouse/catalog stores like Argos. I'm not sure that's the problem I'm describing, however. There's empty houses, business properties and unused cars, yet prices for the residential housing is always rising. Something odd is happening with those empty properties, I have no idea what.
bs0u0155, May 16 2022
  

       Housing prices around where I live are through the roof because of covid. People working from home saw that it actually worked and aren't going back to the office now that they see they can do their jobs perfectly well without having their dumb boss breathing down their neck.   

       So rather than paying exorbitant prices for houses in city centers they're moving to the outlying areas that used to be beyond reasonable commute distances. That's what's happening in Silicon Valley anyway. Buy a 3 bedroom 2 bath in Palo Alto for 4.5 million bucks or buy the same house on the coast for 1/3rd of that and get a nice house by the beach in Maui as well? No brainer. Thing is, when the Richie Riches start moving to the outlying areas, they bring their money with them. Supply and demand.
doctorremulac3, May 16 2022
  

       Here in Detroit they lean on the casinos and gambling dollars they bring in to pay for what dismal city services are offered. Too much inflexible infrastructure that was built over time, and not enough consideration for the folks who have to live with it. So the city shrunk and the smart ones left.   

       Things have been getting better though, finally. The street lights were finally fixed a few years ago.
RayfordSteele, May 17 2022
  

       Detroit is a fascinating city. Once it was basically Rome, the center of manufacturing, it's where the planet made cars. Then the Japanese figured it out, 70s gas crisis etc.   

       I'm not super well versed in the ups and downs of this city, but what I've heard is pretty interesting. Hopefully it can ascend to greatness again.   

       But the most fascinating American city I've been to is Youngstown Ohio, formerly a big steel making town, when the industry collapsed in the 70s so did the city. Looked like a set for a zombie apocalypse movie. Houses, buildings, the occasional store but not a human being in site. It's where I experienced my first drive through liquor store.
doctorremulac3, May 17 2022
  

       It might be a good idea to make lottery tickets out of instant potatoes! People throw so many of them away, so possibly they could be soaked in water to be reconstituted and eaten by the homeless or anyone else who is hungry. Some of those people buy so many instant tickets I often wonder if they have enough money for food themselves.   

         

       not good for germaphobes.
xandram, May 17 2022
  

       "Hey mom and dad, what's for dinner?"   

       "Well kids...
doctorremulac3, May 17 2022
  

       Oh tasty!
pocmloc, May 17 2022
  

       You know, I still can't get this title right. It looks like lottery tickets you can feed to the homeless.   

       Oh well, maybe it's just meant to me. Made out of graham crackers or something.
doctorremulac3, May 17 2022
  

       Do these ideas stay up as longer the more people are clicking on them to view?
doctorremulac3, May 19 2022
  

       I've been to Youngstown. It's not far from the Lordstown auto plant where they used to make Cobalts and HHR's when I was responsible for transmissions for them. That plant was actually in a book study for how not to have relations with unions. How on earth Foxconn got conned into buying such a hole is beyond me. My resident engineer at Lordstown actually had to cover between two separate plants in two separate towns. Crazy.   

       Detroit's slide started with the 60's riots that scared all of the money out.
RayfordSteele, May 19 2022
  

       This is a fascinating subject. The link shows the theories I've heard about the auto industry decline, which I assume is pretty well linked to Detroit's overall financial health. Which gives the main answer? Dunno, but bears some looking into.
doctorremulac3, May 20 2022
  

       An extremely complex set of circumstances involving the industrial revolutions of China and Brazil, reduced shipping costs, unions, local culture, development of advanced technology, rising and falling oil prices, federal meddling in markets, and morons at the top of GM especially but also Ford and Chevrolet. But when there's an easy answer to be had that supports my preconceptions and political agenda I'm all in!
Voice, May 20 2022
  


 

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