At regular intervals, the big winners of the state lottery are presented to us. They are all different, but share several common traits. They usually come from modest backgrounds. They are workers, retirees, hairdressers, petty civil servants, housewives, day laborers.
Luck, apparently, fell on them. Here they are millionaires. However, the majority claims the will not to change too much. They want to stay the same. They say they are satisfied with the deep roots of their existence, their values, their family.
Benoit Gravelle, winner of 2 million this year, said this: “It changes my life, but I will remain the same simple person. »
Another multi-million Lotto 6/49 winner, Hubert Breault, continued, like others, to go to work for a while, while planning to retire, travel and buy an electric car.
Winners buy certain conspicuous signs of wealth, starting with cars. Once upon a time, a winner would buy a big Cadillac. Today, they are electric cars. But automobiles remain a symbol of wealth, just like homes and travel.
Much has been said in recent days about this former Bloc Québécois MP, Marcel Lussier. He won 70 million. His life, it was repeated, has not really changed. As proof, he continues to live in his suburban bungalow and enjoy gardening.
A backbencher, like Lussier, is not badly paid. The base salary of these people, whose role often boils down to getting up in the House to mumble a few canned phrases, is $194,000. Plus transport, accommodation and food costs.
But whether it’s a former member of Parliament, a waitress or a mechanic who suddenly earns millions, everyone elected to fortune by chance shows themselves to be quite cautious, with few exceptions, when it comes to plunging, overnight, into pools of cash.
Without knowing how to live like a rich man, winning the lottery can lead to contempt. In the 1980s, the Lavigueurs, this family from a working-class neighborhood in Montreal, learned this the hard way.
Annoyed, Sylvie Boily and Rénald Dumont, winners of 25 million, have just sold their big house. Their friends complained that they were uncomfortable in large rooms. They preferred the habits of a modest cottage. A septuagenarian, Lilianne Synotte Deschênes, says she bitterly regrets having given almost all of her share of 32 million to her family, which has since given her no sign of life.
The life stories of lottery winners, repeated week after week, endorse the idea that wealth depends on chance tamed by a few quasi-mystical rituals. For some, it is a question of buying tickets without fail at the same convenience store. Mme Delos Reyes played the same combination for almost two decades before winning 11 million. Another systematically played the numbers that make up the important dates of his life. It’s their stuff. In the case of the former deputy who became a multi-millionaire, it was explained, at great length, that he only selected the eight-digit combination to increase his chances. In truth, he had a chance of winning about 14 million, if I understood correctly.
It’s been said many times: you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to win the lottery. Environment Canada estimates that the chance of being struck by lightning during a thunderstorm is nearly one in a million. In this lightning lottery, 2 or 3 people are killed each year in Canada.
A state lottery advertisement these days features a young woman in the middle of a meeting of her co-op. She seems absent, until she announces to the others that she has won the lottery. She bluntly declares that she will no longer deal with common problems. Winning, in our societies, is constantly presented as the possibility of turning in on oneself. Winning also constitutes the possibility for a small group of wealthy individuals to no longer adhere to common policies and to grant themselves the leisure to decide alone, often without the slightest knowledge, what are the “good causes” to support, often with one-time donation.
Playing the lottery is getting closer to your dreams, we are continually told. A Loto-Québec advertising leitmotif, proclaimed for years, nevertheless suggested that “money does not change the world”, before adding a caveat: “except that…” Except that nothing, in fact. Money, randomly sprinkled on a few individuals, does not change at all. He comforts him. Everything remains the same.
Loto-Québec’s revenues are growing. In March, the state-owned company claimed to have its “best performance of the last 17 years”. Inflation, insecurity and the tenfold inequalities of our time are apparently winning combinations for Loto-Québec.
In ancient times, lotteries were used to restore social balance and ensure equality before the law. Chance was supposed to serve society, according to a principle of fair redistribution of power and responsibility. Today, games of chance serve on the contrary to channel, according to legal and regulated means, a convenient way of being even more exploited.
Another Loto-Québec advertisement airing these days claims that the “Ultimate” ticket, sold for $100 each, is “your best chance of becoming a millionaire”. This advertisement somehow tells the truth: in our societies, you have almost no possibility of becoming very rich while those who are already rich have every chance of becoming richer. The lottery always serves less to enrich individuals than to further empty the pockets of the community.