Emergency IT Lesson 6: Compulsory Blog Entry

Lotteries have been called a tax on the poor. Ultimately at only a dollar or two a ticket, anyone can play the lotteries. However, many people become addicted to buying tickets and they can cause family/marital problems. Discuss this topic with a parent and get their view on lotteries and specifically lotteries in Singapore. Include at least one quote from an adult, one quote or reference from either an NPR presentation or YouTube video in your discussion. Your blog entry has to be at least 200 words in length and you must either support lotteries or condemn them.

I choose to condemn lottery. In my opinion, I feel that the lottery has ruined the lives of many people who were addicted to it. Spending a few dollars to buy some chances of winning big money might not seem like a big problem for most Singaporeans but does cause real problems when people get addicted to it. Most Singaporeans actually do know that buying lottery tickets is. A person who is addicted to the lottery will continue to buy more and more lottery tickets until he finally wins the big prize. If the addiction persists for a period of time, the person would have spent most of his savings on useless pieces of paper. Buying lottery tickets is a waste of money and you will get addicted the more you are involved in it. A person will be ruined by the lottery and family and marital problems will arise.

The impressive cash prize is never easy to ignore, especially if you have hopes on winning it, but what are the chances of winning any of the prizes? The answer is 1 in 10000. That means that every lottery ticket that you buy would only give you a pathetic chance of 0.01% to win. And if you want to give yourself a feeble 1% chance of winning the lottery, you have to spend $200, each ticket for $2. However, the impractical nature of all humans makes most people go for it even though the chances are not in their favour. If you manage to win once, consider yourself lucky, but not everybody will get to win the lottery once. Likewise, only a few will be able to win the lottery more than once, so the best thing is not to gamble with the chances and stay away from the lottery or even gambling.

Out of desperation, some people even resort into following superstitious beliefs to grasps as much luck as possible, or discover lucky numbers through others. They would offer joss-sticks to household gods and dead relatives to be blessed and try to interpret all "messages" returned which might reveal the winning numbers. These superstitious would increase the hopes of winning for them and they would buy even more tickets.

In conclusion, the obvious answer is to NEVER buy any lottery tickets as your first ticket will be the beginning of the end of your future and it is NEVER worth it.