An Article From Last year

Why Don’t Lottery Winners Run Wild?

Peter Hartlaub

[This is appropriate considering someone else won over 300 million dollars just recently in Anaheim. I knew I should have bought a lottery ticket at Disneyland! -Amit]

When was the last time a new lottery winner unveiled a master plan to blow the winnings on something useless and frivolous? Just once, wouldn’t it be nice to read about someone who insists on spending the money to “find some better-looking friends.” How about a promise to “squander my winnings on hookers and blow and Oakland Raiders personal seat licenses”?

As the lucky ticket holders from the latest California Super LottoPlus $100 million jackpot trickle forward this week, the public must once again settle for people like 80-year-old Los Altos Hills resident Walter Tracey, an otherwise pleasant man who told the media that his third of the prize will be devoted in part toward home repairs and scholastic funds for his grandchildren.

Lottery winners, by the very act of becoming rich while everyone else remains broke, are already annoying. But nothing twists the knife deeper for us losers than a winner who doesn’t do anything fun with his windfall. Whether it’s because of lessons learned from Enron or repeated tech-stock blunders, this is a culture