Funny how it used to be referred to the “voluntary tax” in the 70’s in Quebec.

As for why marketing techniques are using lotteries, I’ll refer to both yours and 4P’s post on Jason Zweig’s “Your Money and Your Brain”. My recollection of the book it that the anticipation of winning brings a much greater “high” than the actual win. Thus, it is a good marketing technique.

lol!

quietrose: I was thinking I should put a disclaimer at the beginning that there’s nothing to actually win here.

Jordan: It *was* really funny. Truth be told he carried it around in his wallet for the next 6 months (and showed it to people he met), so I think he even enjoyed it (although he told me its a horrible thing to do to a gambler).

Guinness: I had to google “craic”. Neat! Apparently more than buying a chance to win, people are buying a lottery ticket to fantasize about being rich for a couple of days. I don’t like to pay for my fantasies (otherwise I’d owe Lucy Liu LOTS of money).

I also really wonder if those prizes for doing things like filling out forms or buying some new product are ever really fulfilled at all? No one would ever know if they never gave out the prize, so why would they bother?

By the way, I recently heard the expression–”Las Vegas: Go on vacation, leave on probation!”