I think your figures simply indicate the despair in the large secondary labor market. What is the correlation, for example, between the 50%+ of Americans struggling and suffering (Gallup) and gambling?

So where do we go on this?

a) All indications is that the system is about to shift again. People controlling the primary labor markets are not doing a good job and their personal behavior has been dissolute (Enron etc). The emergence of large economies elsewhere will tip the balance. So people making their living in the economy that sells dodgy services directly or indirectly should be up-skilling.

b) Social media provides the opportunity to reorganize to give people more control over their lives.

I’ve moved from a place where consumer choice is a matter of finding the consumer product to the UK where you have 50 choices of baked beans (all frankly as disgusting as the last). It takes an afternoon in the supermarket to find a low sugar cereal. The same exhausting process applies to telephones and professional services. So I know consumerism is an art form. It has to be learned consciously and applied with vigor.

Social media will help.

It will also help organize other sectors. I am looking forward to teaching our children to be discriminating. Beginning with the schools and teachers (and parents!). I’ve taught in cultures where students won’t accept a lottery. If you set the work and they do it and it is too hard for them, you are at fault. In psych theory there is a VIE model. In terms of lotteries: Value of outcome x probability of winning x ability to buy the ticket. The US system assumes the variability is in the third. Other cultures it is assumed to be in the second. And wo betide the supplier who does not deliver on the second.

It seems to me that a good solution could come out of the credit counseling non-profit sector: If a non-profit offered cheaper payday loan-type services in a retail setting to people who were willing to talk with a counselor about their situation, where their current short-term situation could be addressed with bridge financing if they agreed to a relationship with a longer-term financial counselor working with them to make effective change. I think that people would use it. In my experience, it been the combination of lack of education and the shame surrounding the situation that leads people to use these services.

Perhaps I need to pitch this to some of the folks @ http://Kiva.com hmmmmm……

The future will be screwed but they’ll be retired by then and working as lobbyists. For the highway construction industry.

I wonder what the next crop of politicians will dream up to ram terrible shortsighted revenue ideas even further up the state’s alimentary canal.

Even the reasons states sponsor lotteries are suspect and usually not based on reality. My own state, New Mexico, sold the idea of lotteries on providing college scholarships to deserving young New Mexicans. Of course, administrative costs, and competition from Indian-run casinos mean that the numbers of scholarships are far smaller than originally promised.

I enjoy a good poker game with friends as much as anyone, but I have serious reservations about the economic and moral underpinnings of state-run gambling.

Any other big ideas before lunch?

Note: it was when the States got into the lottery business that they decided to go after the sweepstakes business – which drove nails into the coffins of the magazines because they all used Publisher’s Clearinghouse to gain new subs.