Want lottery education/resistance songs

Subject: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: GUEST,mmarlow
Date: 02 Oct 19 - 11:16 PM

Looking for songs to:
a) Help with education (help people learn not to play).
and/or
b) Advocacy/raising awareness of the role lotteries play in society.


Government reports recommend educating children to avoid the lottery. Songs could be a way to bolster that education. Children/youth are more susceptible to getting hooked on lotteries. Lottery decisions seem to be heavily influenced by beliefs and emotions (rather than facts), so seems like songs might be an effective way of helping improve decision making.

For general advocacy - Lotteries have many negative impacts, little known benefit, full impact on society not well understood. Seems like should be some songs to help raise awareness.

Songs I have found tend to talk about people winning lottery.
(Distorts the perceived chances of wining. People would need to hear billions of songs about losing the lottery to balance the perceived landscape to make up for all the songs about winning.)
Other songs tend to romanticize gamblers/gambling.

Thank you.

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: BobL
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 02:41 AM

The continued existence of lotteries is proof that most people don't know how to handle money.

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: Mo the caller
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 03:30 AM

Or that they get more fun from the chance of winning than pain from losing.
The government endorses gambling by selling lottery tickets, as do churches and charities with raffles.

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 04:05 AM

and folk clubs...

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 05:05 AM

I wrote this when the UK lottery started up in 1996.
If you remember the big ad campain used the question "Is it you?" as a promotion of it.

Can't exactly remember the tune I used, never recorded it, but the end of the chorus is an extra line that rise in pitch to sound as a question.

Feel free to adapt and use.

IS IT YOU?
Robin Madge © 1996

Well I heard the man saying on the radio
That we all had a chance to be rich.
He sounded so sincere to my untrained ear,
As he made his selling pitch.

And we’ll all meet together at the rainbow’s end,
All gold digging by the rules,
Yes we’ll all meet together at the rainbow’s end,
And we’ll all stand round like fools,
Is it you....

Just pick yourself some numbers, leave the rest to us.
It’s only a pound to pay,
Then to find out if you’ve won retirement in the sun
Tune in on Saturday.

Whatever you’re prepared to risk we will take
And put it to good use
Out of every stake a percentage we will take
Then let the government choose.

Well there used to be subsidies, there used to be grants
But these have all been cut,
And now I’m thinking that I begin to smell a rat.
The case is open and shut.

They do a lot of talking, all the good that they can do,
With the money they can raise,
But it’s us who’s going to risk it, and them that takes the biscuit
When the government gets the praise.


Robin

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: Howard Kaplan
Date: 03 Oct 19 - 08:39 PM

The Canadian songwriter James Gordon wrote a song called "Stuart and Lillian", which he wrote after he saw a press conference with Stuart and Lillian Kelly, Canada's first huge lottery winners. In the song (if not in real life), the couple wound up sadder after their big win.

There's no recording of the whole song freely available on the 'net, though it is available as part of his album "Mining for Gold" from some (if not all) of the usual sources.

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 04 Oct 19 - 07:22 AM

What did you learn in school today
Dear little boy of mine?

Tom Paxton

If the sons of company directors,
And judges' private daughters,
Had to got to school in a slum school,
Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley,

Palaces of Gold by Leon Rosselson

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: GUEST,mmarlow
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 12:51 AM

> The continued existence of lotteries is proof that most people don't know how to handle money.

In studies I have seen most of the money made from lotteries is from a small portion of population (3% of population pays about half the money, 7% pays an additional 30% of money; remaining 20% of money comes from 40% of population)

So lotteries probably don't tell us much about how most people handle their money. (Only about a particularly susceptible subset of people.)

The motivation for buying tickets, and impact of lotteries may be better understood by considering different populations. Lotteries probably have the most impact on those who play routinely, so understanding them is probably the most useful. (Those selling the lottery focus advertising in lower income and minority areas - populations which have higher rates of buying lottery tickets. They also design games to appeal to particular ethnic groups, like Asians. Similarly, some of them time advertising around when assistance payments come out.)

Subject: RE: Want lottery education/resistance songs
From: GUEST,mmarlow
Date: 15 Oct 19 - 01:02 AM

> Or that they get more fun from the chance of winning than pain from losing.
> The government endorses gambling by selling lottery tickets, as do churches and charities with raffles.

Not clear that fun is a major factor in buying lottery tickets among those who spend most of the money.
Lottery spending does not behave like entertainment spending. (In times of economic adversity entertainment spending goes down, but not lottery spending.)
The money that people spend on lotteries comes from many areas of their budgets (Housing, food, etc.), not just from entertainment.

Heavy players are more likely look at lottery as an investment. (A way to upward social mobility, especially since such mobility is now more limited in the USA than it used to be, or than it is in other countries.)

Not sure that raffles are comparable.
Do you get same pattern of a small portion of people compulsively buying many tickets? I suspect that raffles might be more readily understood as a donation to a worthy cause, with the possibility of some prize not being the primary motivation. (That is just a guess, I haven't researched that aspect.)

The above studies are of lotteries in the USA, many other countries have had lotteries for much longer, but I haven't researched to see if they have similar patterns.