A Student's Loan

Around here the Powerball lottery certainly has been in the news a lot. The estimated jackpot of the 36 state-spanning drawing is $1.3 billion at the time of writing. That's a lot of happiness the players are trying to buy. I will save the long-winded indictment of the system, everyone knows or should know that state lotteries got going in a big way during the awful Reaganomics years where the states tried to raise revenues to pay for public expenses and satisfy the often vicious backlash against property taxes. The very rich were trying and succeeding to become the super rich by pulling Reagan's strings for massively regressive tax cutting, deregulation of all sorts of industries to massively expand corporate power, and huge cuts to social spending. As a sop to the working class that has ever since been slipping from middle class status to working poor, someone came up with the idea of pooling the peasants' money so once in a while one of them could become somewhat rich. Not by coincidence the stigmas of gambling and greed were fading as fast as the idea of community and the public good. In effect, people traded (or more precisely, were scammed into trading) a decent, dignified, and stable economic system for the roller coaster casino of massive inequality we have today. But, as long as there is some little hope of striking it rich through the lottery people seem to tolerate the disintegration of our nation. What if we created a new system of a "public good" kind of lottery?

The lottery is not the only of anti-social institution that has led to our present reality of Donald Trump as front runner for the Republican Presidential nomination despite no experience for the job, but it is a piece of the puzzle. For every Joe Schmoe that feels justified in loathing his job and his boss or coworkers because some day he will win the lottery and leave it all behind, that is one less person willing to fight for reform. Before I was finally downsized and outsourced out of the working-class manufacturing community we had kind of an on again off again tradition of pooling some money for Powerball tickets with the understanding of sharing any big prize we might win. Our foreman was promoted to the job out of our ranks so we trusted him and he would voluntarily collect the money, buy the tickets, and then photocopy them as proof of the numbers. Now my coworkers were really into pools like this and organized little drawings for everything from fantasy football, other sports, and even the cents on our paychecks. We did piecework so our paychecks were slightly different each pay day. I never participated in those but it gave me an idea that I have kind of run with for a while. But it wasn't until the YUUUGE Powerball jackpot became news that I am finally motivated to write about it.

What if we had a smaller scale lottery with a more progressive, socially-minded goal? The Occupy Wall Street movement had an idea to pool their money and pay off members' student loans and other debts. I am not a tech-savvy web design kind of sea monster but with technology the way it is now and getting more impressive every year, I cannot imagine this kind of association would be impossible. Why not start a little website where members can buy in with a small subscription, say two dollars a week, and have a drawing each week to make a payment on student loans, or credit cards, car payments, etc. This would require a degree of trust that most people do not have anymore thanks to con artists and scammers, along with pervasive media propaganda about con artists and scammers. There has to be a way to give an online collaboration enough transparency to get off the ground. Would you pay eight dollars a month for a chance at retiring some debt? I am pretty sure I would.

Here's how I imagine it running. Most sensible people would agree that debt of all kinds has reached a level that is a genuine social problem. Even from the plutocracy's point of view, student loans in particular have surpassed their purpose of social control and become a real drag on economic growth. Therefore the plutocracy may not crush an independent initiative like this the way they would actual union organizing or cooperatives. There may even be individuals in high places that would be sympathetic to a mutual aid organization. Perhaps someone high up in a credit union, or alumni association, or even a progressive church could donate server space or start up capital. Again, I don't know how these things are done, this is just a brainstorm.

A plain website where you create a unique account and subscribe with your credit card or pay pal. I would think people would have to commit to a full year or they might just cancel after winning once. You enter in an account and designate or authorize the site to make payments on your behalf. Then choose numbers for the drawing. You have to choose numbers each week. Then there will be plenty of space on the landing page so you could put an ad or two in to defray some of the expenses, though some of the revenue will have to go towards administrative and tech costs. Then a random number generator can determine the winner(s), it would be more in keeping with the idea to have one large pot and then several smaller prizes. That way a chunk of a members principal can be retired while others can get their payments made. If the cost of subscribing is low enough it won't hurt anyone's living expenses but do some real work towards liberating people from the burden of debt. And give members the experience of gambling without the peril of blowing the winnings on crap.

Of course, the people who most need restraint in managing money will not be interested in this idea. There are numerous articles floating around social media since the jackpot was announced discussing not only how bad the lottery system is for society but that most winners are crushed by the prize in various ways. I think this system I described is a more healthy alternative but I used to feel that way about Internet poker and that was banned. 

If something like this lottery won't work then we need to think of something that will. Something that won't be as easily demonized by the trump crowd as occupy or black lives matter has been. But I won't hold out hope, if a group of people whose major goal is "please don't kill us" and a lot of people say "no" what chance do we have?