We have all done it.

Dream boated that we have won the Lotto.  Dreams of Easy Money.

And why not, most people have a strong fascination with easy money.

If you look at history money is a comparatively recent invention. It seems that most people who got rich by creating wealth did it by developing new technology.

Making wealth is not the only way to get rich. Until a few centuries ago, the main sources of wealth were mines, slaves and serfs, land, and cattle, and the only ways to acquire these rapidly were by inheritance, marriage, conquest, or confiscation.

These days people who pursue happiness through material possessions are liked less by their peers than people who pursue happiness through life experiences.

We all know that there are many senses of the word “wealth,” not all of them material. Here I am talking not about what people will give you money for (materialism), but the quick wealth fix, winning a vast amount of cash.

If You Do Win: There is the painful proposition of managing sudden, Unearned Wealth. The argument that people always use when talking about lottery tickets is “What if I win?”

Well, what if you do win?

People you’ve known all your life suddenly start viewing you as their meal ticket. You’re now a target to criminals, a meal ticket and/or a lender to the people who used to form your close inner circle, and the source of angst not only in virtually every relationship you have with others, but often in the relationship between people you care about.

Anyway just in case your dreams have not come true here are a couple of other ways to get Rich:

Rob A Bank.

Inherit a fortune.

Bet on the right horse, with free money.

Get a hole-in-one for $1 million.

Buy and hold Long-term stock that clicks.

Find treasure.

Get lucky at a car booth sale and buy a Picasso.

Marry rich- with strings attached.

Divorce a Beatle or Rolling Stone- with strings attached.

Be born rich.

Sue.

Unearth gold with a metal detector.

Register a generic domain name.

Have a “non-affair” with a bigwig.

Live on a lake of oil.

Or crack the algorithm that produced the numbers. You will be able to plunder the lottery.

Most of us chase success by working hard, sacrificing our personal lives and even our health in an all-out pursuit of Mammon. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. For a fortunate few, it doesn’t mean a Harvard MBA or years spent perfecting a new drug. It just means doing as little as possible and still making more money than you ever dreamed of.

As much as industrious overachievers hate to admit it, sometimes all you need to get rich is dumb luck.

So what are the odds of winning the Lotto.

A 1 in 80,089,128 chance, or roughly 1 in 80 million.

Matching four of five normal numbers plus the “power ball” is a 1 in 1,668,523 chance.

Matching all five white numbers is a 1 in 1,906,884 chance.

You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than you do of winning either the grand prize or a top secondary prize.

If buying 1,906,884 tickets it could guarantee you that you would win $200,000, which is the prize (in Florida, at least) for matching all five white numbers, you’d still be spending $1,906,884 to win $200,000 – a roughly 90% loss on your investment.

If you were to play the “Power Play” version, you’d spend $3.8 million to win $1 million – a roughly 72% loss on your investment.

The Beady eye does not question your right to buy a ticket or for you to have dreams on whether you sue, marry, divorce, or buy or whatever.

It’s concerned is whether our TVs, our Governments should be promoting wealth.

Are Government Lotteries a regressive tax. They suck billions out of the economy.

Most people buy tickets and win little or nothing.

This is taking more money from the poor, working and lower middle-classes than from those most able to pay taxes. These billions also are diverted away from local businesses.

In other words, why is the government in the lottery business at all?

Government-run lotteries generated more than $70 billion in gross sales in North America during the fiscal year ended June 2010, up $1 billion year on year.

In North America every Canadian province, 43 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands all offer government-operated lotteries.

Elsewhere in the world publicly-operated lotteries exist in at least 100 countries on every inhabited continent. In some cases they are operated by national governments, in other cases by state or provincial governments, and in still others by cities.

Lottery proceeds benefit different programs.

In many cases lottery profits are combined with tax and other revenues in a government’s general fund. In other cases lottery proceeds are dedicated to a wide range of causes, including education, economic development, the environment, programs for senior citizens, health care, sports facilities, capital construction projects, cultural activities, tax relief, and others. Lottery beneficiaries.

Therefore the lottery is not a tax. Webster defines a tax as “a compulsory payment … for the support of government.” No one is coerced to play the lottery. The purchase of a lottery ticket is completely voluntary.

Some say its the poor who are targeted to play. The poor are allowed to vote, get married, and sign contracts. Economic status is not a measure of intelligence.

But make no mistake. Profit is what the state is after.

In other words, governments are raising revenue by tempting the worst off of their citizens to hand over their hard-earned money by playing a game with a ridiculously low return.

So are our Governments teaching our young people who Gambling that it is cool.

Scratch Cards; Online betting: TV Game Shows, all feast on Greed.

If you take Scratch cards.

The tickets are clearly mass-produced, which means there must be some computer program that lays down the numbers. Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random digits. But that’s not possible, since the lottery corporation needs to control the number of winning tickets. The game can’t be truly random. Instead, it has to generate the illusion of randomness while actually being carefully determined.”

Money is Not Wealth.

Money is a way of moving wealth.

They are usually interchangeable. People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage– just a shorthand– for whatever people want.

In fact; ants have wealth. 

When you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population have y percent of the wealth. This is a fallacy.

There is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world. You can make more wealth.

A programmer can sit down in front of a computer and create wealth. A good piece of software is, in itself, a valuable thing. A great programmer, on a roll, could create a million dollars worth of wealth in a couple of weeks. A mediocre programmer over the same period will generate zero or even negative wealth.

Wealth can be created without being sold. We are all richer for knowing about penicillin. The same recipe that makes individuals rich makes countries powerful.

So let the Lions DEN nerds keep their lunch money, for you and I rule the world.

(The Lion DEN by the way is a BBC program where five millionaires sit with large bundles of money in front of them. Young and old Hopeful’s present their innovations or business in the hope of securing an offer of cash for a percentage of their invention or business. If an offer is made the millionaires then squabble with each other offering more or less cash for a percentage share in the victims dream’s of making it Rich.)

Ask yourselves:  Is this family entertainment or Capitalist rape.

The same goes for;

The Briefcase: Millionaire Misers: Rich As Finns: Still Pretty Rich: Money For Nothing: Job Creators In Action: Undercover Employee:

The Undateables:  Exploiting people with disabilities for entertainment

The Hunger Games: New CBS reality show exploits poor families by making them grovel for $101,000.

There are plenty of others.

What leads people astray here in all cases is the abstraction of money.

Both Worldstar videos and these television programs dehumanize the people they show and will continue to do so unless we, as viewers, choose to stop watching.