"Lotteries: America's $70 billion shame"

More than Americans spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movies, and music combined:

Lotteries: America's $70 Billion Shame - The Atlantic

That's $230 for every man, woman, and child in America. State governments should be ashamed of themselves.

But it’s the poor who are really losing. The poorest third of households buy half of all lotto tickets, according to a Duke University study in the 1980s, in part because lotteries are advertised most aggressively in poorer neighborhoods. A North Carolina report from NC Policy Watch found that the people living in the poorest counties buy the most tickets. "Out of the 20 counties with poverty rates higher than 20 percent, 18 had lottery sales topping the statewide average of $200 per adult," the North Carolina Justice Center reported.

 

You're wrong.

They aren't forcing anyone to play, but they know exactly who plays, as has been proven time and again. When the vast majority of people playing the lottery are poor, then that goes a lot deeper than this dressed-up "individual responsibility" argument you're making. States are taking advantage of their weakest citizens' lack of education and their desperation. That's depraved, to me.

So let's see. State governments give poor people shitty public educations. Then they get to blame them for making poor choices and playing the lottery later in life. Win-win for the state!

 

Suppose states did away with lotteries (we'll assume this giving-up is revenue neutral). Is there any theory/evidence that poor people would therefore stop gambling?

 

Maybe states can run paycheck advance stores, too.

 

Maybe the state should sell heroin, too.

 

There was a comic strip by Ruben Bolling once that said kinda the same thing ... it showed subway testimonial ads for things like "Smacko" ("I'd get higher than a kite!"), "Sexxo ("All you need is 50 bucks and a rubber!"), and Whacko ("All you need is five grand and a grudge!").

 

Suppose the following:

1) A state has a lottery set up such that the expected value of a $1 wager is $0.90.

2) After a time, that state gives up its lottery monopoly but rewrites its tax code such that profits earned in games of chance are taxed differently than profits earned in other endeavors.

3) When the altered market reaches equilibrium, in that state the expected value of a typical $1 wager is $0.91.

Question:

Assuming that lottery wagering increases as a result of its price declining, must the state's lottery-revenue revenue decline if said state is to be held less "to blame" for lottery-wagering pathologies?

 

You give more money to the government, they'll find a way to waste it. I used to live in a state where lottery proceeds went for education. One of first things I learned when I moved there was that the county was in the midst of a five-year agreement where they levied an additional one-cent sales tax . . . for schools. WTF?

 

Americans, hell human beings, make it a habit of stepping on the low. This is just another example.

Should it be allowed? The Bible tells us no. It just doesn't give us another viable solution.

 

I have no problem with this at all.

Millions of Americans don't pay any income taxes. If this shell game gets them to chip in some dollars to state governments amid their purchases of flavored cigarillos and tall boys, I'm all for it.

Lottery tickets give you the damn math on the tickets anyway. You know it's terrible odds going in.