A competition based on chance, in which numbered tickets are sold and prizes given to those who win. Often used to raise funds for state or charitable purposes. Also known as a raffle or a sweepstake.
While the lottery may be good for governments, whose coffers fill from ticket sales and winners, this money comes from somewhere, and studies show that state lotteries draw disproportionately from low-income people, minorities, and those with gambling addictions. It’s not an ideal model for a public enterprise, and the fact that many states have no other source of revenue leaves them vulnerable to pressures to increase prize sizes and the number of games they offer.
In addition, running a lottery is not a job for the faint of heart: The advertising that promotes it must appeal to a wide range of people, from the elderly and wealthy to young children, all of whom want a piece of the pie. This approach, if done poorly, can have adverse effects on certain groups of people, like the poor or problem gamblers, and it’s not clear that state government is the best institution to run it.
But perhaps the biggest issue is that most states don’t have a clear policy on lottery management. This is an industry that evolves quickly, and it’s difficult to get a handle on its implications for the wider society when decisions are made by committee or at the executive branch with little overall oversight. Moreover, because lotteries are considered “painless” by most voters, the political pressure to keep them going is nearly always stronger than the need for any sort of comprehensive reforms.
Regardless of how you feel about gambling, it’s impossible to deny that it has played an important role in American history. Lotteries were a key tool in financing the establishment of the first English colonies in America, and they were even used to build some of the earliest church buildings. In colonial era America, Benjamin Franklin held a lottery to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British, and George Washington sponsored a lottery to raise money for roads across the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Lotteries are here to stay, and they’re a part of the American psyche, but that doesn’t mean they’re in a safe place. The future of state-sponsored lotteries depends on whether politicians will realize that they are at cross-purposes with other parts of the economy and be willing to make the hard choices required to rebalance things. It’s not just the lottery; other government programs that rely on gambling revenues are in trouble as well. It’s time to do something about this. Read the full article at Vox.