I personally received 5,000 a year from the TN lottery for 4 years to use
for college.
So in a way, I won 20,000 from the lotto without having to get a ticket.
Yes its a tax on those who are bad at math, but at least in TN its helped
out a ton of kids with rising above student debt!

To be honest, trying to win the lottery is like trying to commit suicide by
flying on commercial airlines.

I used to be all wishy washy, live and let live, everyone is just as smart,
and everyone has commons sense…bullshit. Yes these things are evil but I
cannot for the life of me understand why people gamble especially against
unbelievable odds. I have played black jack and came up on $60 and left it
at that. Does this make me better than those who do? I will pass on being
politically correct and say yes. Idiots everywhere and most are breeding.

People make conscious decisions that affect their lives and they alone
should hold responsibility for their actions. Who are you to tell someone
they shouldn’t do something? Laissez faire is the only way

How is it that this wonderful British man, who is spending a large portion
of his career reporting on the US’s myriad troublesome foibles, would
willingly go through the hellish visa process to stay in said foible-ridden
nation? Does love really conquer all?

hmm i dunno if I’m convinced, it seems like John Oliver is making the
argument that playing the lottery is stupid, well duh, we all know that.
But people enjoy the fun of it, I don’t think they are all hapless idiots,
especially considering those numbers of people playing the lotto. And
ofcourse poorer people spend a larger percentage of their money, noone is
going to buy 10000 lotto cards, it’s just too much time scratching, there
is a law of diminishing returns. Also he points out that, the money from
the lottery replaced money from taxes, and helped lower them. Essentially
the lottery replaced a mandatory payment and changed it to a volunteer form
of funding. I think the lotto helps incentivise programs/institutions that
we think as a nation should support that otherwise may suffer from poor
funding. I think lotto offers brilliant avenues of even incentivising
people to help themselves. I dont think because some people can’t manage
their addiction, we should forsake all the potential good lotteries have
the potential of doing.

12,000+ slot machines in all of Oregon? That’s cute, there’s over 200,000
just in my city(las Vegas). Home of the gamblers and suckers!

That’s why it is forbidden in Islam to gamble.

Huge Jon Oliver fan, absolute legend, but did anyone catch the fact that he
said 21/24 states? (nearly 50%) lol

So a rich guy from Britain who made all his money here in America is
telling other Americans not to play the lottery at all. Hey John,piss off
you limey bastard!

#JohnOliver is fast becoming my favorite…..this guy really makes great
points in his show. #lottery glad we don’t play the lottery. 

Winning the lottery is like taking one of those $10 LEGO sets, throwing all
the pices onto a table, and them all landing in the correct positions as
the fully assembled product.

do not buy scratch tickets , store clerks scan the big winners and sell to
their friend and family. It is all a scam. Casinos are better at least you
have a drink and it is entertaining

“Oregonians” Do they seriously call themselves that? 

As an Oregonian, I can personally say that video poker machines are
everywhere. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone into a restaurant and not
seen one. They are actually everywhere.

Maybe its because I’ve got education in economics and finances that made me
a bit pessimistic about how money works in this world, but the fact of
people getting their lives ruined due to lottery/slot machines doesnt make
the lottery/gambling the devil, it is the people themselves and their own
faults, if they cry about losing, Im afraid there isnt anyone else to
blame, but their own idiocy, loterries,casinos in general are built upon
the idea of idiots spending their money “hoping” to win big, which is next
to impossible and if they believe it might just one day be them, then oh
holy sh*t I would do nothing, but turn around and walk away, I for one have
never understood why and how can someone even remotely believe to win any
reasonable amount of money, honestly if they want to waste money on
something, they might as well be throwing it out the window, that way maybe
someone with common sense might find them and use them for something
actually useful.

only 12.000 machines in one state ?

WHY THIS KIND OF SHOW IS NOT ON NATIONAL TV LIKE CBS ?

“That is nearly 50%”

That was a Colbert joke if I ever saw one. Did John just poach his writers
from every other late night host?

Who else would watch Slumshark Gillionaire?

The Florida lottery paid for my entire undergrad education through Florida
Bright Futures scholarship.

I’ve never seen an ad for the lottery in my whole life. And I watch a lot
of TV.

Jesus Christ. Have some self-control. Apparently John Oliver wants a nice,
socialist government where we don’t get to make decisions for ourselves.
“But I want to spend $5 on the lotto!” “No, you can’t do that. Go buy some
kale instead.”

Lottery is a great thing, on the one hand it’s taxation for stupidity and
being bad in statistics on the other hand its an incentive to develop a
method of sending information back in time

I have lived most of my life in the two states that have absolutely NO
gaming. None. Utah and Hawai’i. It’s great! I HOPE there is NEVER any
gaming, any lottery in these two states. When I am flying into McCarran
Airport in Vegas for business, there are video poker and slots as you get
off the plane! Slots in grocery stores, UPS stores…everywhere. Casinos
are #1 industry in NV. Nevada got KILLED in the recession…people
couldn’t pay mortgage much less afford a weekend trip to the Bellagio! Of
interest is that Nevada plus 6 other states do NOT have lotteries! Casino
lobbyists won’t allow anything to interfere with money spent on lottery
tix. Gambling is the worst addiction I have ever seen. When you go to an
ATM in a casino, the screen lights up with “IS GAMBLING STILL FUN? If not
call 1-800-Gamblers (for Gamblers’ Anonymous)” THEN the ATM dispenses $100
bills! Minimum to withdraw is in $100 increments! I hate all gaming as I
see how many lives it ruins.

Gambling and its problems

Gambling should be legal becauses (I mean in all staes) because it is free
will people blame the machines or the ticket or the cards being not the
best when it is their choice to play


How is it that we are now living in the Future in back to the future were
biff goes back in time and than becomes the most powerful man in the US?

I think most of America’s problems stem from the fact that its policies are
not made in response to the demands and needs of the common people but are
made by how much cash certain profit oriented groups poured in for lobbying
for what was good fit their profits.

#JohnOliver Sadly your last joke was a little too close to reality. In
Virginia hard liquer is only sold in ABC (alcohol beverage control) stores
run and controlled by the state government. So not only is the state in
the alcohol business, the state has a legal monopoly created by the state.

2:19 Education matters to Argonians?

It’s funny at the end with the liquor business bit…

because that is what Pennsylvania actually does. All PA Wine and Spirit
Shoppes are state run.

Lottery is a scam. States that claim that the funds go to Education just
do weird math voodoo by removing regular funding. Otherwise those states
that claim that the lottery pays for education would have schools hurting
for money.

There is a reason why gambling houses loudly proclaim that some
would-be-gambler won “X” amount of money. That is small change and the
house ALWAYS wins in the end. .

My good buddy David is absolutely addicted to gambling. I watched him throw
seven 100 dollar bills (all the money he had for a vacation) on a roulette
wheel just because “it has to turn red eventually”. And he buys $5
scratchers multiple times a day. Hes not even 21 yet. I am deathly afraid
for his well-being once that age comes.

Which do you prefer? 1) The state takes a certain percentage of money from
you at the (implied) muzzle of a gun (that’s called taxes). 2) The state
doesn’t force you to give them anything, but offers a chance at a huge
prize if you give them a little something to take the chance.

Dream mega

Mega flygon


No pity for the stupid bitch… aww no food whine whine…. well clearly
she wasn’t hungry enough if gambling went over survival and well being

The Lottery, A Tax On Hope.

You are better than steward 

here’s the most evil idea ever…

dole out XP for every dollar you spend (like an RPG). for every level you
gain, you have an x% chance better to win (on an odds of 50-100K against
you). sometimes you can win an extra 10-20 extra spins of the gaming
machine…

bam! farmville and/or evony (microrewards and microtransactions) + gambling
D: fuuuuuuuuuu

Crossing fingers is a signal of luck too

The state runs alcohol in PA…

The people who are addicted to lotteries are in the bottom decile anyway,
so it’s not a big loss in terms of GDP.

If you see the whole thing bigger state owned lotteries result in less
taxes for you.
And i am quite sure the money the lotteries makes would still be made, just
by private people. Maybe not in the same amount, but still.

Ohio sells alcohol directly via agencies, so I guess yeah, they are funding
schools with drunks :P

Chance of getting attacked by a shark in the United States is 1 in 11.5
million and the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime is 1 in
3,000. Chances of this happening simultaneously during one of 40 million
minutes of average lifetime expectancy are much slimmer. Check your facts
John Oliver!

I truly believe the lotteries are rigged in order to get money for these
states. This is the poor mans tax and it helps the state collect money
without paying anything out. I really wish someone would seriously
INVESTIGATE the mechanics of the lottery winnings (Which state, and how the
numbers have been generated for those QPs for that state.) Kinda weird
that Puerto Rico is going bankrupt and all of a sudden, someone in PR wins
the jackpot making the PR people rush to spend their money on new tickets.

I don’t think I’ve purchased more than 10 lottery tickets. It’s a “once in
a blue moon” thing for me.

That last joke about what if the government ran the liquor business and had
ads saying how buying alcohol supports education? The provincial government
of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan is EXACTLY like that! Our alcohol
businesses are all run, at least in part, by the government which got into
the business sometime after prohibition ended. We have ads reminding us
that our beer and alcohol, which is two to three times as expensive here
than anywhere else in North America, goes to support schools and hospitals
and policing and the arts. We’re so addicted to the income that despite the
current right wing government wanting to end government run liquor stores,
the alcohol would be just as expensive at a private liquor store.

Idiots who waste their money gambling DESERVE to lose their money. If you
don’t have enough brain cells to resist gambling, you don’t deserve any
sympathy. Pretending like these people are victims is just dishonest.

people need to stay away from them organizations!

I would watch slumshark gillionare

I live in Utah, what lottery? Lol.

Hey I got a score of 12 million on one board on Candy Crush….lol

Dumb people don’t care how improbable it is to win. As soon as they hear
about a few people who won the lottery, they feel confident that they could
be next. When they actually do, tons of people might be after their money
since they have so much to blow.

The sad truth is that public education will always lose to corporate tax
cuts.

This one is awesome! Spot on and well played sir! 🙂

Please address moving corp HQ’s offshore to avoid corp taxes altogether –
that would be good.

oh you americans as corrupt as always :)

Next, mobile “games”.


I knew when I saw the clip from a Tennessee Lottery ad that the three
billion dollars to education was bullshit. I live in Tennessee and I go to
public school here and the school was always begging for money. There were
fundraisers all of the time and we had to buy all of our supplies, we even
had to buy supplies for the class like tissues and paper. The supplies we
didn’t have to pay for though were almost always complete shit. The
textbooks were falling apart, with the covers literally hanging on by a
thread, though I normally attributed that to the fact that some staff
members were probably not even needed. Our school, which was Kindergarden
through eighth grade with one thousand kids in it, had three assistant
principals along with the principle. I understand why we need a principal,
but even one assistant principal seems excessive for a primarily elementary
school.

“FUCK YOU EVOLUTION I DECIDE WHO FLIES OK? IT’S MY CHOICE”
Best part ever.

So this is what happens here in Oregan…I want to go back to Minnesota.

His last joke on alcohol and education is actually what happens in
Colombia. The tax the liquor company pays goes towards education. Not far
from reality, Oliver!

I worked it out and the odds of being struck by lightning and eaten by a
shark simultaneously are actually 1 in 2,623,646,900,000

That “furry” clip…I don’t think there’s that much overlap between those
who demographics…

Why would I give my charity money to a lottery? Even disregarding morals
and ethics and only regarding practicality, it’s more likely that the
charity money will make said poor family wealthy enough that they can pay
you back multiple times out of sheer gratitude than you’ll win that same
money in the lottery. How’s that for your conflict of interest?

The Lottery – A tax on the poor

A lottery is basically a “stupid” tax.
A way for governments and corporations to drain more money from idiots.
Let them do it.

Ugh. I work at a lottery cafe in Oregon. Now I feel more awful than
before…

I completely agree with this video. I will say, however, that I’m
(selfishly) grateful for the Georgia lottery, which allowed me to go to
university tuition and fee free through the HOPE Scholarship. As a whole I
know its not a good program, but I know it helped a lot of kids in my state
go to school with little or no loans

As a person who has to sell lottery tickets as part of their job I hate the
question “Which would you buy”. I always think “A fucking math textbook”.

the lottery is for stupid people who can’t do math.

I believe it was in the liner notes of a Pigface album… “Fuck the
lottery, a tax on the poor…”

The lottery would be nice if it wasn’t so corrupt wire nation is then
financial problems why it does money helping to repair roads and I think
someone that money is going to some corrupt politicians pockets.
It was really stupid when they put more states into into the lottery and
put more odds against winning because they added one more number in the
lottery. They should a left the lottery alone and left half the states to
have the lottery and the other half does have the Mega lottery.
And now you have to pay $2.00 a ticket for their original lottery and for
the mega lottery you does have to pay $1.00.
And I think that when the lottery is over $100,000,000 they should have at
least 50 drawings so some people can split up that 100,000,000 dollars and
we would have more winners that way and that would help are our economy a
lot more.
And it gets me when you pay taxes on when the lottery the government gets
half of it and they should only get 1/4 of it.
And people should have the right to have privacy when they win the lottery
because you don’t need to have people to know how much money you have
because so many people will be asking you for money afterwards and I would
tell them I bought a lottery ticket and one why don’t you go by lottery
ticket and try to win.
But when people ask you for money it’s always good to use the magic word no
.

I have lived in Oregon all my life, and I can’t remember ever seeing a
video poker machine. I am wondering where they put them. I never play the
lottery though, so maybe it is just one of those things that I don’t think
about…like not noticing phone booths anymore.

Well, that’s pretty much how the liquor business works in Ontario,
Canada…

john oliver needs to come here and pound the shit out of me, I would drag
my balls over 100 miles of broken glass and diamonds to have 10 minutes
with the man, yas daddy

I love John Oliver but the bit about the woman blowing all of her grocery
money on the lottery was a bit much…. at some point you have to blame the
individual for being an idiot…. The lottery system is obviously designed
to take advantage of people by giving them false hope but you have to have
some responsibility for yourself as an adult….

Twenty-eight hours earlier, backstage:

John: “So I get to expense the vodka? …can we just do one last-minute
rewrite?”

we need more intelligent, skeptical thinkers like Oliver, James Randi-, and
Dawkins, etc…
It’s time our species gets our heads out of our stone-aged mentality

North Carolina pride!!

But lottery is like the et of video games unless it some how has pacman on
it… In which it’s only a 10000 dollar winner because it still sucked too

It is just a stupid tax.

My state has gambling one gambling awareness sign (for potential
addicts)… It’s about 0.5 miles from the CT border, between partially
overgrown trees, on a fairly lightly travelled road. All of the lottery
signs, on the other hand… They’re in the densely populated sections with
tons of traffic. Seems legit. LOL :)

3:09 yes lower income households spend a higher proportion of their income
on lottery tickets because say 2 families of different income buy 1 lottery
ticket:

5$ : 20,000$ > 5$ : 50,000$

even if they buy the same amount of tickets the proportion would be higher
for lower income (because smaller denominator)

I remember a Missouri Lottery ad here that showed a Swedish transfer
student coming in, and all the kids said “Welcome to Missouri” in Swedish.

to be honest I the ball lottery like spend 5 bucks a week for a chance at
winning big? I mean shit if I won the lottery I’d take 2 million of it for
myself to pay for a small house small car a new computer and the rest would
be to spend bills and anything more than that 2 milion would go to charity
or something.

I agree with Oliver comma John

I guess we should stop building bars cuz people are gonna drink too?

I just discovered this guys show. It reminds me of Penn and Teller’s
Bullshit which was one of my favorites. Every episode I laugh at first and
then eventually cry when I realize every fucked up thing he examines is
downright evil.

i fucking love this man. he depresses the shit out of me every time i
watch, but i fucking love him

i fucking love this man. he depresses the shit out of me every time i
watch, but i fucking love him

13:37

John Oliver is the shit.

this shows so dope i never heard of it till today

I once was on a cruise, and as I walked past the casino, a row of windows
on one side and players gawking into their video slot machines on the other
side… I thought, “They ought to just open the windows and throw their
money into the ocean. It’s basically the same thing.”

State corruption hides in plain sight, and people like John Oliver tacitly
ignore its nature while poking fun at the malice they mistake for
stupidity, smugly chiding politicians to simply do a better job at taking
care of us.

Video slot/poker machines are all over Illinois, too.

I’m from Ontario, and the last bit about States selling alcohol is pretty
much exactly what we do! With similar claims of good causes it is going
towards