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Low-income households spend 9% of their money on lotteries and gambling

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J Warner Wallace of Please Convince Me tweeted this story from the Atlantic.

Excerpt:

The Mega Millions jackpot makes this the week to talk about lottery economics, so here’s a whopper: Households earning less than $13,000 a year spend a shocking 9% of their money on lottery tickets, Henry Blodget relays from a PBS report.* Are they clueless? Are they desperate? Are they economical? Maybe, probably, and possibly.

For the desperately poor, lotteries perform a role not unlike the obverse of insurance. Rather than pay a small sum of money in exchange for the guarantee of protection that you’ll need in the future, you pay a small sum of money in exchange for the small probability that you’ll win money to help your lot right away. It is, for lack of a better term, a kind of aspirational insurance.

So often, everyone acts as if low-income people are necessarily more virtuous than other for earn more, such that we should automatically redistribute wealth from frugal people to wasteful people. Instead of redistributing wealth, though, maybe we should be redistributing character and wisdom and restraint. Maybe the reason that the poor are poor is because although they have every advantage living in the prosperous west, that they just make poor decisions.

Black economist Walter Williams explains:

Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior. If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there’s a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.

Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census’ poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one’s prospects for a better job.

In fact, the number one cause of poverty is the decision by individual people not to marry before having children. That’s not caused by “corporate greed” or other bogeymen. It’s an uncoerced decisiojn that each person makes. If anyone is causing poverty, it’s the anti-marriage left which subsidizes and glamorizes single motherhood by choice and divorce.

Instead of making poverty more comfortable so that the poor can continue to make bad decisions, maybe we should be encouraging them to do the things that will life them out of poverty. Let’s pay the poor to finish school, get married, stay married, get a job, and wait before having children. And let’s support them by giving them school choice and other freedoms that allow them to escape the underperforming public schools. Fixing poverty doesn’t just mean handing people money – there are deeper issues.

What I also like about this story is that it was tweeted by a Christian apologist. Arguing about philosophy and science and history is good, but if we aren’t concerned about issues like abortion, marriage, poverty and freedom, then that’s not a good sign. Wallace should be commended for his concern for the poor.

Polemics

What really happened to Jesus? A look at the early historical records

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From Eric Chabot.

Excerpt:

As historians evaluate the sources available for the resurrection of Jesus, a critical question is the dating of the sources. In relation to early testimony, historian David Hacket Fisher says, “An historian must not merely provide good relevant evidence but the best relevant evidence. And the best relevant evidence, all things being equal, is evidence which is most nearly immediate to the event itself.” (1) One key in examining the early sources for the life of Christ is to take into account the Jewish culture in which they were birthed. As Paul Barnett notes, “The milieu of early Christianity in which Paul’s letters and the Gospels were written was ‘rabbinic.’” (2)

Given the emphasis on education in the synagogue, the home, and the elementary school, it is not surprising that it was possible for the Jewish people to recount large quantities of material that was even far greater than the Gospels themselves.

Jesus was a called a “Rabbi” (Matt. 8:19; 9:11; 12:38; Mk. 4:38; 5:35; 9:17; 10:17, 20; 12:14, 19, 32; Lk. 19:39; Jn. 1:38; 3:2), which means “master” or “teacher.” There are several terms that can be seen that as part of the rabbinic terminology of that day. His disciples had “come” to him, “followed after” him, “learned from” him, “taken his yoke upon” them (Mt. 11:28-30; Mk 1). (3)

[…]There was tremendous care in ‘delivering’ the traditions that had been received. Jesus’ use of parallelism, rhythm and rhyme, alliterations, and assonance enabled Jesus’ words not only ‘memorizable’ but easy to preserve. (4) Even Paul, a very competent rabbi was trained at the rabbinic academy called the House of Hillel by ‘Gamaliel,’ a key rabbinic leader and member of the Sanhedrin. It can be observed that the New Testament authors employ oral tradition terminology such as “delivering,” “receiving,” “passing on” “learning,” “guarding,” the traditional teaching. Just look at the following passages:

Romans 16: 17: “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.”

1 Corinthians 11:23: “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread.”

Philippians 4:9: “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

2 Thessalonians 2:15: “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.”

Paul applies this terminology in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7 which is one of the earliest records for the historical content of the Gospel – the death and resurrection of Jesus. The late Orthodox Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide was so impressed by the creed of 1 Cor. 15, that he concluded that this “formula of faith may be considered as a statement of eyewitnesses.” (5)

Paul’s usage of the rabbinic terminology “passed on” and “received” is seen in the creed of 1 Cor. 15:3-8:

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”

The earliest creeds are the best sources to tell us what really happened to Jesus, and they are surprisingly consistent with the traditional Christians beliefs. Anyone who wants to know what really happened to Jesus should go to the earliest sources.

News

Obama’s new economic plan: more money for unions and Solyndras

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Obama says that we need to take taxpayer money away from job creators and give it to teacher unions and green energy companies run by Obama fundraisers.

Excerpt:

Obama said he wants to give public schools the “resources” they need to hire and reward good teachers.

“So I don’t want folks in Washington to be bashing teachers,” he said.  “I don’t want them to defend the status quo.  I want us to give schools the resources they need to hire good teachers, reward great teachers.”

Of course, the evidence shows that throwing money at public schools doesn’t produce better outcomes. The right solution is to let parents choose the schools their children would attend with a voucher. That works, but Obama is opposed to that because it would take money away from Obama campaign – which is funded by money taken from union dues. So this part of Obama’s plan is just about funneling money through the teacher unions into his campaign war chest.

Next:

Obama additionally said he wants to “double down” on the money he has already put into solar and wind power, biofuels and electric batteries.

“Let’s double down on clean energy that has never been more promising — solar and wind and biofuels, and energy efficiency, electric batteries,” he said.  “That’s what we need to be investing in.”

Again, we have seen with Solyndra and the other similar companies that go bankrupt, that green energy is nothing but Obama handing out taxpayer money to companies linked to people who give donations to Democrats running for office. The purpose of wasting money on green energy companies isn’t to reduce gas prices for poor people. Wasting money on green energy actually raises gas prices by devaluing our currency through deficit spending and money printing. The purpose of green energy grants is to reward people who fund Obama’s election campaign. If Obama cared at all about families facing high gas prices, he would have approved the Keystone XL pipeline – and he didn’t.

Next:

President Barack Obama has released a new video in which he praises the nation’s largest abortion business, Planned Parenthood, which is a prime endorser of his presidential re-election campaign.

“For you and for most Americans, protecting women’s health is a mission that stands above politics,” President Obama says in a video message for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “And yet over the past year we’ve had to stand up to politicians who wanted to deny millions of women the care they rely on and inject themselves into the decisions that are best made between a woman and her doctor.”

“Let’s be clear here, women are not an interest group. They’re mothers, and daughters, and sisters, and wives. They’re half of this country and they’re perfectly capable of making their own choices about their health,” Obama says.

Again, Planned Parenthood gets hundreds of million dollars of taxpayer money to kill babies, then they turn around and hand a bunch of their profits back to Obama with campaign contributions. All of this high sounding rhetoric from Obama is nothing but spending taxpayer money like a drunken sailor that will come back to him in the form of political contributions. That what all this “brother’s keeper” rhetoric amounts to.

More here from Investors Business Daily.