If There is Hope it Lies in the Proles

The title of this blog post is a quote from George Orwell's 1984.  There is another quote from that prophetic book that I often reflect on:

The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive.

Lotteries are a tax on the stupid and the poor.  In the United States, many lotteries are even run by the state itself.  Less than half of the money brought in is usually returned to the people in prizes and the other goes towards the state's operating budget.  People living in poverty and desperation play the lottery every week.  If they play $20 a week on average, then they spend more than a $1000 a year on worthless slips of paper.  It is an unfair tax on the poor because even if all people play the same amount each week, poorer people pay a larger percent of their disposable income than rich people.

Why am I bothering mentioning this?  I watched this video clip from WoodTV8 on my google news about the 355 million jackpot for Mega Millions, and a woman actually said what should would do if she won was "buy a house, a new car, you know, the American dream".

People now believe that the American dream is now only obtainable if they can win the lottery.  There is still much opportunity in the United States to live a long and prosperous life.  But reading the economic headlines coming out of America the last two years I really struggle to have hope.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont can sum up just how bad things are becoming economically in the United States.  The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, and the proles just keep playing the lottery.