It is time to rethink the lottery systems.
The United States was left scrambling this week after their Powerball draw on Jan. 9 failed to produce a $900 million winner, making the draw on Jan. 13 worth an estimated $1.3 billion.
That’s $1.84 billion Canadian, based on the exchange rate on Jan. 10, or $1,842,295,000.00 if you were to actually write it out.
That is a lot of numbers; I can’t even wrap my head around that much money. It is actually kind of sickening to me to think that one person might walk home with that much money or, even worse, if no one wins this jackpot it will grow to at least 1.5 or maybe even $2 billion dollars.
We are talking about an amount of money usually only discussed by governments or companies that span across the globe.
If one person were to win that money and they spent their money even kind of wisely, I couldn’t imagine how many generations of people from that family would still be reaping the benefits of their lottery win.
According to the United States Census Bureau, there were roughly 318 million people in the USA in 2014 and according to a report published by market research and consulting firm, Spectrem Group, there were 10.1 million households with at least $1 million worth of investable assets, excluding their primary residence in the US in 2014, which leaves roughly 308 million people.
If you took the jackpot and divided it into $1 million increments for every person under the $1 million mark you would still have roughly $1 billion left over.
Now I admit $1 million isn’t a huge sum of money, especially in the United States where states and the IRS collect between 25 per cent and 50 per cent tax but you would still be left with between half a million and 750 thousand.
While not enough to retire, that sum of money would certainly go a long way and should allow people to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, if they’re smart with their money
In Canada we have two main national lotteries, Lotto 6/49 which sits at a $5 million dollar jackpot, after it was won on Jan. 9, with a bonus $1 million for their draw on Jan. 13. The other main national lottery is Lotto Max, which sits at an estimated jackpot of $50 million dollars with six additional draws for $1 million dollars.
According to Statistics Canada, the Canadian population is nearly 36 million people with 984,000 millionaires according to a global wealth report published by Credit Suisse in October 2015. This leaves 35 million Canadians with fewer than $1 million in assets.
If we take the same rule as we did with the US and give each Canadian $1 million we would be left with $27 million. Like their American counterparts, people would be left with enough money to live comfortably.
Unlike their American counterparts though, Canada doesn’t tax lottery earnings according to the CRA website but they do tax interest earned on the winnings, meaning if you win $1 million you walk home with $1 million dollars but any
investments made with that money will be taxed.
All told there is $62 million worth of prizes to be won in Canada and a total of $1.362 billion dollars between Lotto Max, Lotto 6/49 and Powerball.
Admittedly, the United States has changed their current lottery system recently but not in a good way, having changed the odds to make it even harder to win the jackpot, meaning the jackpot will only continue to grow in size.
Canada has also changed their lottery system allowing $1 million draws but only when the jackpot reaches $50 million for Lotto Max with Lotto 6/49 guaranteeing a $1 million winner each and every draw.
Both made minor improvements to their system to allow for more million-dollar winners but at a price, since both lotteries now cost more to play, meaning that the jackpot hasn’t been spread around they’ve just increased cost to allow for extra prizes.
I see the question posed all the time about how to end world hunger. The answer is staring us right in the face; most of us are just too greedy to see it.
