Hope to Hopeless
As the economy continues it’s downward spiral, it seems some of the desperate have turned to desperate measures.
Since being laid off from the auto industry last July, Christian Gonzalez has been living at the poverty line, struggling to find work in a community devastated by the recession. But three times a week, like clockwork, the 40-year-old scrapes together the money for a lottery ticket in hopes it will act as “a magic wand, a cure for everything.“
With jobs continuing to dwindle, experts say lotteries, sweepstakes and other games of chance will cross the threshold from casual entertainment to last resort as more Canadians like Gonzalez desperately seek economic salvation.
“It’s the Hail Mary,” says David Just, an associate professor of economics at Cornell University. “This is not something they do for fun. It’s, ‘If I don’t do this, I have no chance of ever pulling out from where I am’.”
In studying lottery sales in 39 states over 10 years, Just and his colleagues found a strong positive correlation between ticket sales and poverty rates.
photo credit: Mickipedia
