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tuyop posted:Yes, if you gamble then a lottery ticket can be a fair bet, but that's very rarely the case. At least in the big multistate lotteries, it's never a fair bet, no matter how large the jackpot gets. The reason being that as the jackpot grows, the number of ticket sales per drawing grows in an unfavorable way. This increases the odds that you'll have to split the jackpot to the point where your expected payout is negative. Maybe it could work for a smaller local lottery that has a different sales curve due to less media exposure, but megamillions and powerball won't be fair bets even if the jackpots somehow get to be in the billions.
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Mar 18, 2014 17:13
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Cranbe posted:The odds are horrible, yes, but there is logic in choosing certain numbers—the ones that other people pick less often. They don't increase the likelihood that you win, but they do decrease the likelihood of having to split the prize if you do win. So playing certain numbers actually would have a higher expected value than others. This is true, there are numbers you want to avoid because they are commonly picked. But even in the best case scenario where everyone picks random numbers, you still have negative EV for even the largest jackpots.
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Mar 19, 2014 06:38
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dreesemonkey posted:I don't want to derail too much, but I'm eating around 1600 calories a day. I'm not claiming counting calories is that great dietary wise, but it's simple and effective for me. I think society has conditioned some bizarre diet myths into the popular consciousness. People hear about these diets and their primary criticism is "thats not enough!" I'm not aware that science allows for you to have a net reduction fat unless you expend more calories than you take in. It's just physics. Realistically not many people can spend the time it takes to burn an excess 1000 calories a day, so reducing food intake is the most effective way to do it. I think lifetime has shown one too many anorexia specials. W&W goons feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Relevant chat: business trip, free lunch and dinner today and tomorrow.
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Mar 24, 2014 16:53
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For my invesments I just list everything as a fraction of the index market cap. This way I don't care if prices go up or down, I still own 0.0000005% of America. And some Europe too.
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Nov 26, 2014 20:47
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tuyop posted:Collecting unemployment in Canada has nothing to do with the employer. AFAIK, a portion of your income is fed into the EI fund, then people who need it take from the national EI fund pool. It's also the pool that funds maternity leave and sickness leave and stuff. So a guy making 150k pays like 5k a year to pay the professional lawnmower who makes 25k in the summer a living wage when there's no mowing. No employers have anything to do with it beyond reporting contributions and your income in these forms that also include your reason for not working. This is not structured differently than the US (except the maternity/sick thing), although the US system has actual experience based underwriting. As in, employers who have higher than average historical claims rates usually have to pay extra premiums into the EI program. It has pros and cons: industries that use the program more correspondingly have to pay more, but it creates an incentive for lovely managers to make up fake reasons to fire people "for cause". To be honest I didn't know that Canada's program doesn't do experience rating. Seems a little odd to me since the program would then be a big subsidy from stable industries to seasonal/cyclical ones, which isn't really what the goal of EI is.
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May 1, 2016 21:22
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tuyop posted:You've described a real feature of the system. It's just like, this social safety net thing we have going on. Probably going to destroy our country but whatever. The safety net is the part where workers receive UI payments in the off-season. The part where the seasonal employers (and ones that simply chronically abuse EI for non seasonal reasons) receive a subsidy from all other employers isn't a safety net. It's not even an intentional goal of the system. It's just arbitrary.
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May 3, 2016 05:12
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General life advice: if a real life human being attempts to sell you something totally unsolicited (ie you didn't walk into their store, or initiate contact yourself) it probably is not a good deal. If it were a good deal it wouldn't have the margins to support someone going around door to door or cold calling.
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Aug 7, 2017 17:20
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quote:In fact, depending on how it's designed, the 401(k) proposal could even lose the government money, given that the pot of money taxed on the front end is smaller than the pot of money taxed on the back end. This is an important point: although the taxpayer ends up with the same amount of money at the end (assuming the same effective bracket) in Roth vs Traditional, the government ends up with way less in the Roth scenario. Even after adjusting for inflation. I don't know if this idea will pass CBO scrutiny.
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Aug 25, 2017 02:48
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I Love Topanga posted:ESPP is the biggest question mark. My brain is telling me to contribute max, hold for a year (to get LT Cap Gains), then sell and contribute to Roth IRAs and Index funds in my brokerage account. You have to pay regular income tax on the 15% discount regardless of how long you hold.
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Aug 23, 2019 19:31
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Purple Prince posted:I've tried automating Dutch books but typically gambling sites have fairly strong protections against scraping their odds (for this exact reason). I can only imagine automating credit card schemes like this would be even harder. I'd be interested in hearing about your experience with this. I'm curious how big the arbitrage opportunities are and what kind of technical issues you run into.
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Aug 28, 2019 18:45
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