If you are on welfare and you win the lottery, should you be allowed to keep the money?

Question

If you are getting your income from public funds, I don't think you should be allowed to buy lottery in the first place. However, if you do win, I think you should repay whatever funds you took from the public and spit the rest 50/50 with the public. Thoughts?

If you had to pay the money back + 50% of the remainder, it would be a disincentive to buying lottery in the first place.

dcjohn: Welfare is social engineering in the first place.


To all who keep making analogies to rich people: Rich people earn their own money.
If you ask for financial handouts based on the premise that you are so destitute that you can not make ends meet, the fact that you are playing lottery proves you are recieving the aid under false pretenses. In that case they should have to pay it back.

Answer 1

"If you are on welfare and you win the lottery, should you be allowed to keep the money? If you are getting your income from public funds, I don't think you should be allowed to buy lottery in the first place. However, if you do win, I think you should repay whatever funds you took from the public and spit the rest 50/50 with the public. Thoughts?"

The quick answer to your question is "Yes. Welfare recipients should be required to pay back the benefits they have received if they win the lottery."

The purpose of welfare in the U.S. is not to provide a permanent socialist living experience for poor or disadvantaged people. The theory (albeit one that is stretched often) is that welfare provides the poor and disadvantaged with a means to "get back on their feet" and to live beyond a level of subsistence while doing so. This is especially true where there are children involved. By providing welfare benefits to poor people with children, the children are better able to become independent members of society (or at least not take welfare later in life).

I don't agree with the 50/50 part. Between the taxes the winner pays and paying back the system for the benfits they've received, they'll be "even." Anyone winning the lottery pays taxes on it. So, obviously the taxes alone will not offset welfare benefit costs. (That's specifically a response to all those people who answered that the taxes should cover it.) And sure, they shouldn't have been using welfare monies to play the lottery. But if they pay it all back, then the money will be put back into the system and that won't really be an issue in this context.

I wouldn't stop at the lottery. Any receipt of monies over $50,000-- be it from a game of chance, an inheritance or the like should be garnished to help recover at least some of the funds that person received from welfare. Make the first $10,000 in welfare receipts exempt. But after that, recover amounts.

A proportional system would be fair. Any receipts up to $100,000 would require say a 35% garnishment (beyond taxes). Anything over that a 50% garnishment. And if you receive over $250,000 you would be expected to pay the welfare benefits back in full (assuming you haven't actually received that much). Obviously, you would only be responsible to pay back the amount of the benefits-- not an additional amount. Assessing an interest amount would be fair, but I don't know that's it's necessarily sensible in the broad scheme of things.

I should note that there have been welfare recipients who won the lottery or came into money and then paid the welfare system back. It's the right thing to do. It's the moral thing to do. And it should be the legally required behavior.

Answer 2

First off, love the name, I laughed my *** off at it lol

I',m going to the Powerball lotto as an example for what I'm about to say , or whatever you have that has the BIG win.

Ok back to the question. Should people on public assistance be allowed to keep lottery earnings? Well that depends I suppose. I think if you are on government assistance you shouldn't be playing the lottery in the first place. That includes recipients of Welfare, Social Security, SSD, SSI , and Foodstamps/EBT.

My reason for that is easily explained at any local liquor store.
Walk into one around the first of the month , you'll see gangs of people cashing their checks ,and immediately using it to purchase cigarettes,alcohol and of course lotto tickets. So now you have people robbing their families of the money provided to them , for items that have no use for food or financial benefit ( you cannot call a lotto ticket, financial benefit)

But the reality is, you can't stop these idiots from doing that. So if they are to play the game? Then yes I believe all aid they've received should be paid back to the government in full, with a 6% intrest. The includes monthly checks,medic-aid transactions,foodstamp/EBT purchases and anything else such as clothing vouchers, vehicle allowances, etc.

Now,what ever is left after all that should be given to the winner under the conditions that for each child they have, a trust fund be established immediately that cannot be touched by anyone other than the child upon reaching the age of 18. Also, the winner should be forced to purchase a steady home and vehicle before anyother transaction.

After all of that? Then sure, do what you will with the rest because I doubt there would be much more than to live by, unless you lucked up on a big $340 million ticket

Answer 3

Should the winner be subject to repay some or all benefits received from welfare if they win the lottery? You probably wont like this answer.....but no I do not.

Please follow me here....what if someone goes on welfare and then comes off after their situation improves (for example they finish job training and get a job as a nurse). Under normal circumstances the government would not ask for any refund of benefits. Their reasoning being that if that person can return to society as a productive tax paying citizen then it is better off for all and the benefits paid were of good use. But by all means this is a best case scenerio and I admit is often not the result. But still there must be fairness and justice in our decisions. If we made the lottery winner repay benefits then we should make all repay benefits regardless. A better solution would be agressive approaches to put people back to work at any way possible. Education, job retraining, job placement, or even workfare is a better solution to the welfare problem.

But the rest of your thought, about taking 50% over and above repayment of benefits, is already in place. It's called taxes. And considering the wasteful ways of our government I do not approve of giving them any more money under any circumstances. Its like giving a drunk on the verge of alchol poisioning another drink of liquor.

Additional Comments:

So your goal is to discourage playing the lottery at all. That is social engineering. As much as a negative the lottery is on society attempting social engineering will not stop it. Both sides of the political specturm have tried it and its a proven failure. Once you make the lottery legal there is little left to do except make it illegal.

Answer 4

I mostly agree with you. To respond to some of the other answers regarding proof that the dollar came from the government. Regardless of where that specific dollar came from, had the government not been giving you money, you would have had to use that dollar for food, or rent or something other than the lottery. I think if you win the lottery, you should pay the taxpayers back WITH INTEREST and keep the rest at the normal lottery tax rate.

Answer 5

well I"M not on welfare, but I'm going to answer yes to that. I pay into social security and dont get it should I have that repaid to me? Welfare comes from taxes and just because you get assistance, does not mean you aren't paying any taxes into the state. Most welfare recipients do work, believe it or not so they are or have been tax payers just like you! We live in a country where you are gonna pay taxes and not much if any control over where that tax money goes. I'd be more concerned about illegals here than the legal welfare recipients. However the system could use some major reform. Welfare is supposed to to be hand up not a hand out. Get on, but get off and help yourself!

Answer 6

Yes you should be allowed to keep the money. When you win the lottery about half of the winnings are taken as taxes and that would pretty much pay back the government for what they gave you; the rest you should be able to keep, but if you had any heart you would probably donate some of the winnings to charity anyway.

Answer 7

To be entitled for welfare, your earnings need to be below some figure.

We have to report all our income to the tax man.
It does not matter if it is money from a job, interest on money in bank, win at race track, have a yard sale, get allowance from parents, financial gift on birthday ... all income must be reported to the tax man ... which is not to say everyone obeys this.

It could be that if you win a lot of money, you are now over the threshhold for receiving welfare, and you stop getting it. That is probably fair.

The purpose of welfare was to help you financially while you are temporarily down on your luck. Thanks to the lottery winnings, you are no longer in financial difficulty, so you not need welfare anymore.

Answer 8

If you win the lottery, which 99.999999% won't, you will pay 30-60 % in taxes, depending on where you live and how much you win. That should make up for any welfare you received. Besides, if take it all away, how will they be able to move into a better trailer park.

Answer 9

Sure. After we do that, we could have the government take everybodies paychecks, and distribute them equally. We'll call it "communism".

You don't pay enough income tax to whine about welfare. When you find yourself a billionaire, and finally run out of tax shelters, then you can worry about it. For now, you just aren't a big enough fish to be affected by it. Were they going to give your 80 cents back if it didn't go to welfare? Why begrudge anyone else? You never know when things might go really wrong, and you'll find yourself relying on the charity of others for a time.

Answer 10

-Anyone who plays the lottery should be able to keep the money
-There should be NO taxes on lottery money
-Government welfare should not exist

While I agree that it's irritating that people on welfare are playing the lottery, that's the price you pay for socialism. People take advantage. Once you buy into the concept that the government has a responsibility to take care of a certain segment of the population, then you're asking for this sort of stuff to happen. The only way you could prevent this type of abuse is to implement some horribly authoritarian police state to monitor purchases and other life choices deemed undesirable by the government. Thanks, but no thanks.