Florida Lottery Gives Free Gas For Life

Free Gas Instead of Cash?
In yet another sign of how gas prices are affecting the economy, several states, including Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma, have begun offering free gas for life instead of the usual cash prizes in lotteries. Of course, there's a catch: in Florida, for instance, free gas for life means that "each winner will be awarded 26 prepaid gas cards, each worth $100, every year until death." Interestingly, in Florida the free gas will go to the second-prize winner, while the first prize winner will win a cash prize. What's interesting about this is that many people say that "gas has become more precious than cash now," and therefore they would rather win the gas--even though the cash value of the gas is far below the cash value of the first-place prize. Valuing gas more than money? Has our addiction to oil become that endemic?

Real Solutions Are Being Ignored
In fact, Florida decided to start awarding free gas after "90 percent of regular lottery players, responding to a poll in which a year's home mortgage payments were among the other choices, said the prize they would most prefer was free fill-ups." Of course, this is much like the idea of a gas-tax holiday and off-shore drilling: gimmicks that make people feel like something is being done about gas prices. Meanwhile the real measures--efficiency, better public transit, alternative fuels, etc--are ignored.

Via: ::NY Times

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More on Gas Tax
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Comments

[NTO08]

I like that here in NY metro area, people are stealing cooking oil refuse from Chinese and Italian restaurants...the stuff is liquid gold, since can be turned in to car fuel.

[KillerCarlson]

The lottery is giving free gas for life? So are cows, guys and my Aunt Gertrude.

[leduck]

this one is cute
i like it
so lets see
oil depletion follows a bell curve
i'm middle aged
maybe i have 30 to 40 good years left of hypothecal driving
back in the good ole days, the EROIE of oil was around 100
it's now about 15 (give or take)
if we've peaked right now
i could possibly live to see oil go down to 5:1 or lower
we'd be in terminal decline for sure

who knows what the price of oil or gas would be then
but yet they still want to offer me free gas for life?

there could be very little if any oil left to econmically extract in 30 to 40 years, but they still want to pay for my gas

yep
ignorance is bliss

[KillTheMessenger]

If you could see me now... I am rolling on the floor laughing about how stupid people are who are playing the lottery. I am laughing even harder about people who are playing the lottery for money that will be paid out in 26 annual installments, i.e. where the total winning amount has to be fully depreciated by inflation! Which simply shows that people do not know what "net present value" is and what it does to your money. And if YOU don't know what NPV is, this is your cue to go to Wikipedia and look it up.

And what is really killing me is the fact that people are playing for a commodity like gasoline which will not even exist on any scale of importance 26 years from now. So unless you are decided to keep your car as a collectible, you won't even need gas by then...

Wow. This just keeps getting better.

[vcsmith]

Quote by Rutgers professor -- "The lottery is a tax on the stupid".

[1099]

People who play the lottlery at all are throwing their money away.

[KillTheMessenger]

Las Vegas gives you way, way, way better odds. And they even pay for a couple of your drinks. And when they lose, they pay all the money immediately.

I like Las Vegas. It's a well run business that does not even lie about making a sucker out of you.