Social Lottery: Germany?

I sat and watched a show last night on commercial German TV.  They had a 12-minute piece with a moderator and three-odd guests.

The topic?  Social lottery.

So, there's this gimmick of social lifestyles being discussed in Germany.

There would be a lottery to occur....probably once a year. Those who get their name drawn....would get 1,000 Euro a month for one year.  They could spend it on beer, clothing, Pepsi, wild women, a vacation to Greece, a renovation job for the house, or a bunch of tattoos.

The selling point by one of the guests is that you'd get a chance to live an extra 'big' life for twelve months.  Then, the money would end.

They didn't really go deep into details.  One would imagine that you'd only get a chance to win this once in your life.  There would be no limit on the use of the money....so if you wanted 12,000 Euro of pot, or Russian vodka.....well, that's OK.  The number of Germans on this yearly win?  They left that out for the most part.  My humble guess is that it'd have to be more than 10,000.  To ensure that everyone in Germany had a chance to win this once in their life.....you might have to play 150,000 to 250,000 winners per year.

I sat and thought about this for a while after the segment ended.

As part of the discussion group, they brought on the head of the Linke Party....aka, the former Communist Party of Germany.  You can kinda grin that she's a bold supporter of the plan.

Where would the money come from?  Well....more taxes.

At some point, I wondered....why not just find various way to cut income and VAT (sales taxes), and then just hand every family in Germany 120 Euro each month, for the rest of their lives?  Why create a fake lottery, when you could just skip that part and make everyone a winner....every single year.

I guess that wouldn't make the social lottery dreamers happy.....giving everyone a chance to win.

One of the issues here that I see is that you'd have welfare or poverty type folks who'd get the one single year of big money, and blow it on mostly beer, cigarettes, marijuana, and fancy dolphin tattoos. Two months after the money runs out.....they'd be at some mental health clinic....all depressed because they were awful happy with the thousand a month, and the mental guy would respond that money doesn't buy happiness.

Another issue that I'd predict on....is that you'd have the same experts on social lottery coming up in ten years to suggest that you need a second lottery to exist with a chance for 300 Germans to win a mega-lottery.....10,000 Euro a month.  Five years after that....they'd suggested a super-mega lottery chance for 100 Germans to win 100,000 Euro a month.

Odds of this selling to the pubic?  Maybe one in a million.  But it's a good topic for nightly TV moderators to talk about because there's no soccer on TV.