a news story on the radio claims that people who bet, gamble or wager in the U.S. will lose one hundred billion dollars in 2018.

that includes the lotteries and casinos .

2019 is projected to be 118 billion dollars of losses.

did the U.S. collect a 100 billion dollars in taxes in 2017?

quote:

is one hundred billion dollars a lot of money ?

No, because it's less than 1 thousand billion dollars (aka 1 trillion dollars).

Taxes collected are over 3 TRILLION annually.

So that means that 100 billion will be "won" as well. Glass half full. Sounds better that way.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:


did the U.S. collect a 100 billion dollars in taxes in 2017?

The US Federal government collected over 3 trillion dollars in taxes.

Estimated FY2019 revenue for US govt is $3.4 trillion.
$1.7 trillion will come from income taxes and $225 billion from corporate taxes.

quote:

is one hundred billion dollars a lot of money?

It's all relative, as illustrated above by Q

However, having seen the growth of gambling, from horse racing, to river boats that had to take an excursion, to the lottery, and now straight casinos... I think it's a net negative to society.

The house usually wins, and the people who lose are often people who really can't afford it. Like an alcohol or drug addiction, people addicted to gambling usually end up losing everything.

I would take it in hundred dollar bills. a Billion of them. 1,000,000,000 hundred dollar bills. That's serious gun fund money.

quote:

Originally posted by LtJL:
I would take it in hundred dollar bills. a Billion of them. 1,000,000,000 hundred dollar bills. That's serious gun fund money.

You could become a one man army... first of all there’s something wrong with that statistics.!

Hell I am a simple man. If you guys want to send me a cool hundred bucks, hell I will even send you a thank you card.

So how did everything run before this massive influx of cash in the form of tax collected on gambling.

Jim Jordan (of the Freedom Caucus in Congress) was asked how he would fix the spending problem in DC. He said the first thing he would do is outlaw the words "billion" and "trillion." He would require that they be expressed as a "thousand million" and a "million million."

He said people just don't understand the massive difference in magnitude between all these huge numbers and have become desensitized to hearing about trillion dollar deficits and budgets.

As an illustration he pointed out the following:

1 million seconds is roughly 12 days.
1 billion seconds is about 32 years
1 trillion seconds is almost 31,700 years.

I thought that was an interesting way to approach the issue.

Don’t remember where I heard it, but just recently, someone said: “A million seconds is about 12 days. A billion seconds is roughly 34 years. A trillion seconds ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth.”

Oh, if a billion seconds is 34 years, 100 billion seconds is 3,400 years; I’d say it’s quite a lot.

Money is never "lost". It goes from one holder who does something with it to another holder who does something with it. You may argue that gambling is a poor use of money, in that the one who loses the bet gets nothing of value for it other than the frisson of making the bet, but the one who wins the bet now has money to use for other things. That may be employing people in a casino or betting parlor, but that is undeniably economic activity that is beneficial to those employed.

As noted above, often the "loser" in that transaction is not in a good position to not have that money, which would be better spent on food, housing, family, or saved for retirement, but if we wish to be a free people, we should not dictate how holders of money spend it.

In addition, gambling has historically attracted criminal activity, either through control of the betting process thus enriching elements of society that are committing other harms, or by rigging the betting process so that the "loser" is more likely to lose. Those are problems of regulation and oversight, not of the activity of betting itself.

Personally, I am not a gambler. I will occasionally buy a lottery ticket (short term retirement instrument or gambling for people who are bad at math), might buy a couple of "squares" at a superbowl party, and might lay a buck a hole playing golf, but I don't otherwise participate. My position on gambling is more libertarian, practical and freedom oriented than based on public policy or societal cost/benefit analysis.

quote:

“A million seconds is about 12 days. A billion seconds is roughly 34 years. A trillion seconds ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth.”

How’s that make you feel about a $20 trillion debt?

It makes me feel like that math misses by about 64,966,000 years in the last colossal leap....

A trillion seconds is only 31,709 years. Dinosaurs were around 2,051,244,000,000,000 seconds ago, give or take.

I've got pics.

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:

quote:

“A million seconds is about 12 days. A billion seconds is roughly 34 years. A trillion seconds ago, dinosaurs walked the Earth.”

How’s that make you feel about a $20 trillion debt?

It makes me feel like that math misses by about 64,966,000 years in the last colossal leap....

Is it wrong? I did not spend the time to proof check.

ETA: you’re right. A trillion seconds is just under 35,000 years. Dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. Big difference. Thanks

Well, with that much money, you could afford curb feelers for the Mothership, bendable.

makes me wonder if I am living life wrong,
everybody , it seems is pretty much tossing their money to total strangers
by way of the casino's and here I am
trying to scrimp save and set aside.

maybe Iam the weirdo

That’s enough money to make a difference in my life.

quote:

Originally posted by LtJL:
I would take it in hundred dollar bills. a Billion of them. 1,000,000,000 hundred dollar bills. That's serious gun fund money.

What about ammo?