Opinion

SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF

CLAIRE BRYAN 

AND REGAN DETWILER 
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MANAGING EDITOR

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, January 28, 2016

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, 

Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim, Payton Luokkala, Aarica Marsh, 

Anna Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, Lauren Schandevel, Melissa Scholke, Rebecca Tarnopol, 

Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie Trierweiler, Mary Kate Winn, Derek Wolfe, Hunter Zhao

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

T

he current Powerball jackpot sits at 
a measly $75 million, and well out-
side of news coverage, too; it’s a mere 

fraction of the record $1.5 
billion jackpot set a few 
weeks ago that dominated 
headlines and office water-
cooler conversations.

Perhaps it’s out of the 

news for more pragmatic 
reasons as well. Math-
ematics is a form of prag-
matism, in my opinion. For 
a mere $2, you can play 
one in 292,201,338 odds 
to hit all six numbers and 
take the jackpot. Working 
out the expected value for such a play, or the 
return on investment in a sense, is difficult 
since it depends on the prize amounts and 
number of players, but excluding those fac-
tors gives an expected value of somewhere 
around negative $1.42. Once you include 
splitting the earnings with other winners in 
the same prize tier, as well as paying taxes on 
the earnings, reduced cash value if prizes are 
taken in the lump sum and inflation on prizes 
taken as annuity, at some point for the lower 
jackpots the cost of paper 
and ink for the ticket is 
worth more than its pos-
sible earnings value. Even 
at the record $1.5 billion 
jackpot, a ticket was only 
worth about $1.32.

Nobody should be sur-

prised at these figures. 
Like any form of gambling, 
the lottery is carefully 
formulated and mathe-
matically plotted out such 
that the odds are against 
the players, so that the 
house, or in this case the 
state, can make money. 
The Powerball officials 
certainly know this, and use it to their advan-
tage. Changes to the Powerball rules reduced 
the odds of winning the jackpot specifically 
so that it could grow to record heights and 
draw in more ticket buyers through the viral 
media billions of dollars tends to generate. 
With the odds in their favor, the Powerball 
makes more money, even if someone wins the 
jackpot. The odds are against the players in 
extreme ways at these lower jackpot values, 
and it’s these players playing at these low 
jackpot levels who drive up the jackpot of the 
Powerball. It’s unlikely there’s a winner any-
time soon, as it takes more than 300 million 
tickets in play before the odds of a winner 
become more favorable, and thus the Power-
ball and lottery news will be out of the daily 
news cycle. But it’s the demographics of these 
players who regularly play and drive the jack-
pot up that show the nasty, predatory nature 
of the lottery.

Citizens from impoverished counties play 

the lottery at much higher rates than resi-
dents of wealthy counties. Tickets are bought 
in significantly disproportionate amounts by 
those who are unemployed and lower class, 

and those who lack secondary or post-sec-
ondary education. One study showed that 71 
percent of lottery players would use the win-
nings to pay off debt, a clear sign of financial 
instability worsened by the poor investment 
strategy of playing the lottery. While the old 
adage of “the lottery is a tax on the mathe-
matically challenged” is somewhat demean-
ing, the regular players of the lottery, and 
those buying tickets that drive up the Power-
ball jackpot in its early stages of the cycle, are 
the ones who cannot afford the repercussions 
of playing. The lottery, like any form of gam-
bling, has the potential to be addictive and 
destructive, and lower socioeconomic status 
has been shown to be a significant risk factor 
for developing into a problem gambler.

This money, essentially a voluntary tax, 

goes directly to the state; on average, the lot-
tery pays out 62 percent of its revenue as win-
nings, and thus represents a 38-percent tax 
rate on purchases. The moral dubiousness of 
fundraising at the expense of citizens who 
can least afford this tax would be offset by 
tying the lottery to the one cause people tend 
to be in universal favor of: education funding. 
Yet, studies show that the lottery fails to pro-
vide any benefit to education itself, as not only 

do non-lottery states pro-
vide more funding in their 
budgets than lottery states 
with lottery revenues, but 
after the implementation 
of a lottery, states tended 
to 
decrease 
education 

expenditures, and often 
directed the earmarked 
funds to other causes 
anyway. The lottery has 
become 
nothing 
more 

than an obstacle to insti-
tuting sensible tax policies 
and budgets that prop-
erly and morally support 
education, at the expense 
of an already marginal-

ized lower class. The mantra that the lottery 
is good for education is nothing more than a 
fraudulent explanation to plug holes in a state 
budget with decreased debate. The lottery 
draws in a lot of money from a small pool of 
players: Depending on the state and study, 70 
to 80 percent of lottery revenues come from 
20 to 30 percent of the players. The lottery 
doesn’t affect the majority of tax-paying citi-
zens and thus there is not much of an axe to 
grind with the process. It sets up the lottery as 
nothing more than a political ploy.

Nobody is going to win the Powerball 

jackpot for some time. The amount will con-
tinue to balloon to some astronomical num-
ber, sparking a situation in which the media 
sends buyers into a frenzy, tickets are bought 
and news stories are written about how the 
lives of the winners are forever changed. Yet 
the important stories will come in the weeks 
after, in the stories of the lives of those who 
will buy the tickets in vain. Their lives, too, 
are changed, one loss at a time.

—David Harris can be reached 

at daharr@umich.edu.

Foregoing the lottery

Psychologists, therapists, sociolo-

gists, etc. all claim through research 
to have the cure for what has become 
the modern-day disease plaguing 
relationships: divorce. There are 
many statistics out there for the cor-
rect and accepted divorce rate. Some 
sources claim the rate of all mar-
riages ending in divorce is upward 
of 50 percent, while others cite it as 
being closer to 30 percent. Whatever 
the number, it is still disturbing and 
worthy of inquiry to study why so 
many marriages end tragically. Being 
divorce conscious and researching in 
depth what really makes a healthy 
marriage or relationship seems coun-
terintuitive. People have maintained 
successful and happy relationships 
in the past, so why does divorce seem 
like such an issue now? Perhaps 
the answer to the question of why 
divorce happens is simpler than so 
much research tries to explain.

My personal experience with 

divorced parents has shaped the way 
I view the study of relationships as 
well as these statistics that so many 
professionals try not only to explain, 
but also to prevent from increasing. 
My parents divorced when I was 10 
years old, resulting in my mom leav-
ing the house and moving to a neigh-
boring city to be close to my brother 
and me. Each of my parents, prior to 
their relationship with each other, 
had divorced their first spouses as 
well. Now, both of my parents have 
moved on to third marriages. While 
this may seem insane to some who 
have no experience with divorce, 
it became very common to me as I 
grew up and began to develop as my 
own person.

As a child, growing up in what is 

often termed a “broken household,” 
I quickly became aware that there 
was barely a difference between my 
parents and my friends’ parents who 
were still together after X years of 
marriage. My parents fought, their 
parents fought, too. My parents 
were able to be happy around each 
other for the sake of their children, 
and those other parents who were 
still together were able to be happy 
despite fighting, too. So what made 
my parents so different from those 

other ones who were able to stay 
together? Only since moving out and 
coming to college have I discovered 
any real answer to this question. I 
can now view my own family from an 
outsider’s perspective after not living 
at home for six months or so, but still 
receive the details of what is going 
on and who said what in this fight or 
another. This has helped me realize 
that the secret to a lasting relation-
ship may be easier to find than I orig-
inally perceived.

Communication is key. Yes, I 

think the solution to keeping two 
people together indefinitely is as 
simple as being able to effectively 

communicate with each other. When 
referring to communication here, 
I am not suggesting that talking at 
one’s spouse will save a marriage. 
However, being able to objectively 
express one’s emotions, grievances 
and thoughts to another person, 
hearing and allowing the other per-
son to reciprocate and be listened 
to is the huge secret to the success-
ful maintenance of any relationship. 
This communication, if completed in 
a manner that allows both people to 
feel heard and respected, can resolve 
any issue that may arise and create 
an air of intimacy between people.

The research done on the subject 

of divorce that most parallels this 
idea of communication being the 
most important aspect to a healthy 
relationship comes from the work 
of psychologist John Gottman, 

who has studied relationships for 
more than four decades. His work 
has shown that when comparing 
groups of couples who have main-
tained their relationships to groups 
of couples who have split up, there 
are a few defining characteristics 
that separate and explain why the 
people who stayed together were 
able to stay together, and why those 
who separated were not able to stay 
together. From this research, Gott-
man found that physiologically, 
those who stayed together main-
tained calmer and more trusting 
states during conversation while 
those who had split up were con-
tinually 
showing 
flight-or-fight 

responses, even when discussing 
simple events from the day. The 
ability to trust and feel respected 
and happy during conversation 
comes directly from practicing 
 
 

effective communication.

Proper communication extends 

further from the topics that are 
most important to couples, the ones 
that may cause arguments into silly 
little conversations that seem mun-
dane. Gottman’s research continued 
to say that those couples who stayed 
together were more likely to indulge 
in their partner’s “bids” or attempts 
at getting the other person’s atten-
tion with some seemingly insignifi-
cant occurrence, such as wanting 
to talk about something funny that 
happened at work that day. In Gott-
man’s research, those couples who 
listened and recognized the need 
for this simple form of communica-
tion were able to make their partner 
feel heard and emotionally fulfilled. 
Those couples who split up were 
less likely to humor their partner 
and disrupt their own lives to dis-
cuss these kinds of topics.

Proper communication for both 

important and unimportant topics 
has become a sort of lost art in rela-
tionships. People either do not know 
how to communicate effectively or 
are not willing to put in the energy to 
do so, and the institution of marriage 
has suffered for it. 

 
—Caitlin Heenan is an 

Editorial Board member.

Divorce disease

CAITLIN HEENAN | OP-ED

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DAVID 
HARRIS

E-mail michEllE at shEngmi@umich.Edu
MICHELLE SHENG

I haven’t been a conservative 

forever. Until my junior year of 
high school, I considered myself an 
unavowed liberal. I won’t bore you 
with the entire story, but several 
factors contributed to me coming 
to the realization that I harbored 
many conservative thoughts — not 
an absolute ideology, however.

Not surprisingly, I started to 

identify with the Republican Party 
— it seemed like the logical deci-
sion. I am now a proud member of 
the College Republicans here at 
the University — but of my party 
at large, I cannot express the same 
degree of pride.

As I survey the current presiden-

tial primary battle, my choices have 
been narrowed down to the lesser 
of many evils. Call me a “slave to the 
establishment” or not a “true con-
servative” — frankly, I don’t care. I 
am not one to shy away from saying 
I adhere to some liberal ideas along 
with my conservatism.

What!? A member of a political 

party who doesn’t agree entirely with 
their party’s platform? Such horror!

Therefore, I’m sure you can 

understand that with the advent 
of the likes of Donald Trump, Ted 
Cruz and the other bloviating insti-
gators who occupy Republican 
debate stages, I am filled with utter 
disgust at the state of our party. Not 
only is it a detriment to moderates 
like myself to have bigoted bombas-
tic individuals holding the banner 
of the GOP, but it moves our nation 
further along a partisan divide that 
seemingly increases day by day.

However, I want to focus on 

Trump as the true symbol of my 
current distaste.

Yes, I know, he is discussed 

incessantly ad nauseam. But it isn’t 
the man I concern myself with, it’s 
what he epitomizes.

The prospect of Trump as the 

Republican nominee is becoming 
increasingly viable — he was poll-
ing at 41 percent in the latest GOP 
primary poll. This means several 
things, but perhaps the most strik-

ing is this: Apparently, if you asked 
about two-fifths of GOP voters, 
they would consciously cast a ballot 
for a candidate who promoted a pol-
icy banning an entire religion from 
entering the nation, who suggested 
we deport 11 million illegal indi-
viduals “humanely,” who doesn’t 
have a shred of political experience, 
who attributed global warming to a 
Chinese hoax to somehow gain an 
economic advantage over the Unit-
ed States and who cannot answer 

basic questions regarding foreign 
or domestic policy.

You really can’t make this stuff up.
It is easy to pry for sympathy 

from those who aren’t Republicans, 
as Peter Wehner recently did. Bear 
in mind, Wehner worked for the 
previous three Republican admin-
istrations, and now he is clamoring 
to vent his frustrations in arguably 
the nation’s most liberal main-
stream newspaper.

As I read the comments section of 

that article, almost every single state-
ment reflected the same principle: 
Sorry, GOP, but this one’s on you.

Unfortunately, they are spot on.
After years of unrelenting nay-

saying — at times, clear racism 
— a lack of basic knowledge about 
reproductive health, along with 
just plain ignorance about women 
and the election of congressmen 
who disrupt a State of the Union 

address with exclamations of “you 
lie!” — just to name a few — we have 
formulated a party that would not 
only accept the likes of Trump as 
our standard-bearer, but fervently 
support him.

As Wehner points out, there was 

a time when the GOP stood for con-
servative ideals, but wasn’t catering 
to prejudicial remarks or proposals. 
There was even an era when work-
ing with Democrats on legislation 
wasn’t taboo. I find it appalling 
that Marco Rubio is consistently 
attacked by his fellow candidates 
for being a member of the biparti-
san coalition dubbed the “Gang of 
Eight” that tried to pass compre-
hensive immigration reform just 
a few years ago. Granted, many 
of these arguments are focused 
on the bill’s actual substance, but 
what irks me is the reality that 
Republicans charge at Rubio simply 
because he attempted to formulate 
policy in tandem with Democrats.

There are times when I ponder 

the idiom “you are your own worst 
enemy.” Well, my fellow Republi-
cans, this may be a time to discuss 
that idea amongst ourselves.

If Trump or Cruz becomes the 

nominee, I’m not sure who I will 
vote for, if anyone at all. Just like 
Wehner, I believe this could be a 
watershed moment for the GOP — a 
point at which center-right individ-
uals devoted to bettering the world 
along with our Democratic coun-
terparts split with angry, mob-like 
“Republicans” who would rather 
see Muslims banned from the 
greatest nation on Earth than solv-
ing, as a united citizenry, the issues 
that grip our country.

Nobody can predict the future, but 

we can look to the past for possible 
answers. We now know one thing 
for certain: We, the GOP, created the 
mess we are in. Now it’s up to us to 
either fix it or let the party run its 
inevitable course toward failure. 

What we created

I am now a proud 

member of the College 

Republicans here at 
the University — but 
of my party at large, 
I cannot express the 
same degree of pride. 

BEN KELLER | OP-ED

The mantra that the 

lottery is good for 

education is nothing 

more than a fraudulent 

explanation to plug 

holes in a state budget 
with decreased debate.

People have 
maintained 

successful and happy 
relationships in the 
past, so why does 

divorce seem like such 

an issue now?

—Ben Keller is a 

senior editorial page editor.

