Last week's Freakonomics podcast, one of my favorite, introduced a new way to make people's savings to lottery. The interest rate in US is so low that most people choose to consume rather than save the money, which might put them into poverty without any "bail out". The Americans like playing lottery. Last year, the money spent on lottery tickets is roughly $200 per person. However, lottery is cheap as an entertainment, but dreadful as an investment.
If we can combine the lottery and saving together, it will be another story. The idea is, if you save an amount of money, say above $25, you will get a chance to win a big prize, from $2,000 to $1,000,000 every month. The prize fund comes from the pool of interest earnings of all deposits. It’s sometimes called a “no-lose lottery,” since a depositor is automatically entered into the lottery but can’t lose the original money she deposits.
This idea can encourage more people, especially the poor, to save their money; but the problem is legislation. Because in some states, only the government can launch a lottery.
What makes me worried is the nature of this idea will be altered evil when spread widely like micro-finance, which is initially an idea to help the poor, but failed and turned out to become a way to extort the poor recently. Profit seeking, as the nature of capital, will eventually alienate this good approach we handle.
more related readings from WSJ.
zhuangbility!
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