New Jersey Mom, 7 Kids Win $429.6M Powerball Jackpot

[Purveyor]

Source: Patch.com



The Smith family keeps thinking this is some kind of joke.

But as hard as it is to believe, the family of brothers and sisters say they know their $429.6 million payout is real.

Valerie, Marcia, Steven, Jacqueline, Tracy, Kathy, Renee and their mother, Pearlie, revealed themselves as the 8 winners of the Powerball jackpot on Thursday.

The Smith family, who declined to reveal their hometowns, identified themselves as the shareholders of the ticket while their mother, Pearlie, purchased it.

Read more: http://patch.com/new-jersey/lawrenceville/8-new-jersey-winners-4296m-powerball-jackpot-revealed-0

[Brickbat]

1. Here's hoping they get the support and protection they'll need.

What an amazing change. I hope it works out for them.

[Jitter65]

2. This makes me so happy. May they be blessed with peace, good health and wisdom and much joy!!!

[Jitter65]

3. Sounds like they are off on the right track. One going to fund her program to help troubled women.

[Dustlawyer]

4. Gotta love mom!!!

[rladdi]

5. OMG a deserving family wins the money. I am so happy for them. But they will

need protection from the criminal elements who will scam them. I hope they get good legal representation too.

[awoke_in_2003]

22. I am reminded

of the cat juggling scene in The Jerk (father, you look like a religious man)

[Urchin]

6. If it's OK for the state to make people rich at random

Then the state should also award reduced taxes to people who buy a reduced tax lottery ticket, so even if your rich, your can pay even less taxes.

And also award a 4.0 index in the subject of your choice at state colleges if you buy a grade lottery ticket, so every student who parties instead of studying can also have a chance at a perfect grade.

And also give first-place awards to various sports competitions if you buy a sport competition lottery ticket, so every couch potato can win an athletic gold meda.

And instead of elections, let candidates buy election lottery tickets and the winner is selected for office at random.

Point is, the above are unfair, and so is making people rich at random. That so many of you don't see it, is a sign of how America's work ethic has declined: we no longer think of money as something awarded to people based on the merit of their work. And that is very, very wrong and demoralizing and mostly or entirely the result of our unnatural level of wealth inequality.

[politicaljunkie41910]

7. Quit your bitchin. We still live in a FREE WORLD. People have a choice to participate in lotteries.

They also have a choice not to. The sad fact is that the poor do spend a disproportionate amount of their take hope pay on lotteries and games of chance which they will never win. But I don't begrudge them the choice of doing what they wish with their money.

I just hope that they get some good financial planning advice so that their winnings will last them a lifetime.

[rury]

16. Amen!

[Urchin]

21. It's not what the poor decide to do with their money

It's the state victimizing the poor and the rest of us by appealing to the base desire of getting something for nothing.

And in the process, of the state setting a bad example.

The state should stand for fairness, the state should stand for order against chaos.

For the state to encourage a system of belief in which money is not the reward for merit, is the same as the state contributing to the belief that any reward is not based on merit.

State sponsored gambling is a sign of how far America has fallen from a nation that strives to create an order in which people are rewarded in proportion to their abilities and contributions to the whole.

[jberryhill]

37. So, the disabled have no shot in your world

[virgogal]

26. That amount would last several lifetimes. I could cope

with winning 1 million dollars but 429 million would be overwhelming.

[Human101948]

29. If the past winners are any indication they will probably be broke within ten years...

Indeed, 44% of those who have ever won large lottery prizes were broke within five years, according to a 2015 Camelot Group study. The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards says nearly a third declared bankruptcy—meaning they were worse off than before they became rich. Other studies show that lottery winners frequently become estranged from family and friends, and incur a greater incidence of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, and suicide than the average American.

http://fortune.com/2016/01/15/powerball-lottery-winners/

[TexasBushwhacker]

31. Not all of them go broke

The ones who spend the money on lots of things for themselves tend to go broke, but the ones who spend their money on others tend to do okay.

[Mosby]

48. The thing is that wealthy people itemize their gambling losses

including lottery tickets and it reduced their tax liabilities.

Poor people can't do that.

for the record I'm against government and commercial gambling. I have seen it destroy too many people and their families. It's worse than drug addictions.

[Enthusiast]

11. Curious take for a member of DU.

[Urchin]

32. Why is that?

Is it because a member of DU should believe we should have an economic system that rewards people unfairly, like the super rich?

You see a difference in principle between having a lottery for a cash reward and having a lottery for the best college grades or having a lottery for who gets promoted at your place of work?

Everybody's seems so happy that a poor family won the lottery. But next time it could just as well be a mass murderer who wins or some person who once tried to set a homeless man on fire or someone who tortures puppies.

You want a government that rewards people like that at random with hundreds of millions of dollars?

That's sick.

And who's thinking about all the poor people whose kids went without enough to eat one night because their family spent money on losing lottery tickets, because the government preyed upon the desperation of those poor people, so the state could take some of the little bit of money they have.

[LiberalElite]

23. Some win the lottery and get rich, some don't.

Some are physically attractive and others aren't. Some are healthy live for many years and others are snuffed out in infancy. I could go on. It's the nature of life.

There's nothing wrong with the work ethic of anyone I know and we buy lottery tickets. It just gives a little hope of deliverance from the daily grind and worries about finances. I see nothing wrong with it.

[Urchin]

42. You enjoy randomly making more super-rich people to lord it over you?

You enjoy randomly making more super-rich people to lord it over you?

[Urchin]

44. You are victims of your own illogical nature

People have evolved to be more interested in feeling good today than in avoiding feeling bad later.

That's why so few people save for retirement.

That's why so few people are concerned about climate change.

That's why many people continue to smoke.

That's why so many people have problems with procrastination.

So it's no surprise that the ignorant indulge themselves in the excitement that they might win a lottery and become a member of the despised 0.01% elite, then dwell on the overwhelming likelihood that they will not win the lottery and feel disappointed after they find out they lost.

You probably have a better chance of being struck by lightning between now and the next lottery drawing, but that you don't think about because the chances are so remote.

But you do think about the even more remote chance that you will win the lottery.

Doesn't make sense.

Meanwhile, the state exploits this tendency of people to be able to get more revenue, when the state instead should be getting the revenue it needs by taxing the super-rich, like those hedge fund managers, the majority of whose ill-gotten gains are taxed at the low capital-gains rate since they lobbied for and got that change in 1993.

And most lottery ticket buyers are poor and sure don't need to be exploited into giving more of their money away.

But if you insist that people should be randomly rewarded, let's extend that to athletes and college students.

No matter that other athletes practiced long and hard or that other students studied when other students were partying, let's just ask people to buy olympic medal lotteries and college grade lotteries, to win gold medals and perfect grades. Think of the extra revenue the olympic committee and colleges could get, no matter if it's unfair to people who worked for it.

Hey, this is America, where any random fool can enrich themselves or win gold medals or graduate with the highest honors.

I suspect that anyone who approves of the lottery system has a deep-down feeling of hopelessness, which they vicariously soothe when they see random people enriched.

It must be something similar to conservatives, when though they themselves are being impoverished, want to preserve low taxes for the rich. I dunno. Maybe becauuse those low-income conservatives believe that one day their ship will come in, too.

[LiberalElite]

45. Give it up Dr. Freud eom

[Nye Bevan]

25. You wouldn't be saying that if you had won (nt)

[Urchin]

33. I never bought a lottery ticket in my life

And never will.

[jberryhill]

27. The most common method of becoming wealthy

....is to inherit wealth.

Tell me how Franklin Roosevelt, JFK, or George W. Bush primarily became wealthy?

[Urchin]

34. They became wealthy the same way as this lottery winner

Unfairly.

No one makes that kind of money by working harder or smarter than anyone else.

Because no one can work that much harder or smarter. No one is that many times smarter or that many times a harder worker.

Just as there are poor who are unfairly poor, the super rich are unfairly rich.

We have a government that does not foster an economic system in which people are fairly rewarded.

And government sponsored gambling is a sign of government being negligent of the welfare of it citizens. We didn't always have a government like that.

I remember when the government first started lotteries--they told us the proceeds would go to schools to help the children as a way to sell the idea to a resistant public who rightly believed state sponsored gambling was wrong, because a government should strive for fairness when and wherever possible, even if only to set an example.

This is one of the many reasons so many people no longer trust government.

I don't recall government lotteries to give away millions at random, as being part of FDR's New Deal.

[jberryhill]

38. Look, I'm no fan of lotteries

But I believe they will not cause the fall of civilization.

Personally, it is the discordant noise that is popularly considered "music", the animalistic sexual gyrations quaintly dubbed "dancing", and the predictable combination of those with intoxicants such as liquor and consequent lowering of inhibitions against lasciviousness which is gnawing at the very foundations of the Empire!

[niyad]

39. that whole christian work ethic thing is sick and twisted, but thanks for playing.

[Urchin]

43. Don't turn this into a religious issue

When it's a commonsense issue.

How is it OK to make random people super-rich, people who could be rapists, child molesters, gun collectors, homophobes, or racists just as well as be nice people?

And then they would use their riches to further their psychopathic crimes against the rest of us.

But oh, no, couldn't be. All lottery winners are poor deserving people who have been victims of random bad luck.

So rather than fix a system that too often randomly makes people super-rich and super-poor, let's randomly super-enrich a handful more people at the expense of the already poor.

[yellowcanine]

46. Or we could just be happy for this woman and her family and hope they help a lot of people

with the money. But that would be too easy I guess.

[EL34x4]

10. She's 70 years old

Doubt she's too concerned about buying birth control.

[Nihil]

12. Ain't that the breaks though?

Just when that money would come in useful ...

[rury]

15. Nasty uncalled-for comment. Can't help

but wonder if you would say that if she were white and had seven kids.

[Lochloosa]

17. Thank you

[Enthusiast]

9. There is a God! Yay!

[Nihil]

13. If that's your view of an "Act of God" then ...

... ah fuck it ... you probably agree that “Friday the 13th is now a blessed day” ...

Clash of superstitions FTW!

[LiberalElite]

24. Is Nihil short for nihilistic? eom

[jalan48]

14. Get some investment help.

She going to have friends she never knew about.

[christx30]

30. And an uncle she's never heard of with a great investment opportunity. It can't fail! n/t

[laundry_queen]

35. Do the lotteries

in the US provide any help at all?

The lotteries here in Canada provide counselling and financial planning to help winners, to avoid some of the bad stories that we all used to hear about (people going broke after a year, or getting scammed). You don't hear about people having so many issues anymore (and I know a couple of lottery winners - my parent's next door neighbor was the most recent - and they confirm there is support offered for all lottery winners.)

[jalan48]

36. Not that I'm aware of here in Oregon.

It's a great idea though.

[onecaliberal]

18. Awesome. So happy that folks who needed it actually won.

Good for them!

[bluestateguy]

19. I wish her well

I really do. And I hope she is able to fend off the many "friends" and scamsters who will come out of the woodwork now begging her for money.

Hopefully she can avoid the fate of so many lottery winners who end up broke inside of 5 years.

[Stainless]

20. Nothing like deserving lottery winner(s).......

To bring out the bigots and haters on DU......

[gwheezie]

28. Auntie Pearlie, is that you?

Joking aside, nice she's good hearted and sharing with her family.

[librechik]

40. This makes me very happy

I'm usually disappointed with the lottery results--hope they survive the curse (of getting money without a plan--been there, done that!

[madokie]

41. Awesome

That to me is better than my being the winner.

[yellowcanine]

47. Good point. I think some of the attraction of playing the lottery is feeling good

for the people who win and knowing that at least sometimes "deserving people" win. It may be a bit of a rationalization but hey, whatever helps to get you through the day.