Listen to your parents! About playing the lottery!

The propaganda is everywhere these days and it isn't just politics anymore. It seems as though nothing online can be trusted anymore and almost everything is one swindle after another.

When legislation was passed in many states banning the advertising of any gambling, at first state-run lotteries were exempt for this because as it was claimed, the funds are used for education even though no proof as far as I know was ever provided for this.

Later though, this sort of advertising was also banned and I thought that was a good move. Gambling is gambling and either you are going to make all advertising of it illegal or you are going to allow all of it. Who is administering it shouldn't be a part of the picture.

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Shortly after this legislation was passed though, the government operatives in charge of the state-run lotteries started to do things that private businesses would be investigated and prosecuted over and that is op-ed stories about lottery "winner" that appear almost daily in various news aggregates on a number of sites.

These stories are almost always so ambiguous that they could be anyone and are therefore mostly unverifiable. They also, just by coincidence I am sure (sarcasm) are stories taking place in areas where advertising of these games is illegal. Sadly, these are also mostly parts of the country that have large poverty problems.

This story takes place in Giles county, which has a poverty rate of nearly 15%. This is 50% above the national average.

But but but! You don't have to be poor! All you have to do is play the lottery! If you don't believe me then you can read this story about a mother who urged her child to play the lottery and magically your daughter will win $500,000 dollars!

It's amazing! It's also almost certainly completely made up.

These stories always end without telling you anyone's name, normally they won't list the name of the store it was purchased at (which is required in official winning statements) and the always end with some sort of wholesome thing that the "winner" intends to do with the money.

In this situation the young woman is going to buy a car of her own, remodel a bedroom, take a trip to Dollywood (are they trying to ride the Dolly Pardon death wave?) and invest the rest of it.

These stories just scream "fake news" and they are an almost daily occurrence on many sites.

Now if you are like me you don't believe that the government is actually there to help you, they are there to fleece you for the most part. Even if by some lightning striking chance you were to win 500k in the Virginia state lotto, the federal government immediately would take $120,000 of it, and the state would take $20,000. Then of course you would be taxed on anything that you buy in the form of sales tax, and then if you bought anything biggish (such as the new car mentioned in the article) you would be taxed annually to keep it. To make matters even worse, this windfall of income would bump you up to a higher income tax bracket and you would now be responsible for an income tax rate of up to 37.5%. Ah, the freedom of America!