The Lottery: A Social and Fiscal Scam on Everyone



You knew it wouldn't be long before litigation muddied one of the big lottery payoffs.

A group of office workers in Maine is suing one of the winners of the recent $295 million Powerball game because her ticket, they argue, was purchased as part of an office pool. She says she bought her own.

Call it the apotheosis of greed in the 21st century. But also call the lottery what it is: A sucker's game, a social and fiscal scam on everyone.

The Numbers Game

Lotteries are immoral because the players really can't win, except by an astronomical stretch of fortune. As in most casino games, the odds are stacked against the player, who always loses even if he hits once in a while.

Indeed, that occasional hit is what keeps the loser coming back. If lottery players and casino gamblers could win consistently, neither lotteries nor casinos would be in business. If states paid out more than they earned, they'd go broke.

Of course, the players themselves are partly to blame. Most don't understand statistics and probability, and therefore believe the more they play the better their chances. Some even believe it helps if they play the same number every day.

Some day they'll hit a winner, but their premise is false. Consider a roulette wheel, which has 36 numbers; 34 black and red, and two green. Many players believe that by playing the No. 7 on every roll, eventually it must hit. Some roulette players even track the winning numbers to predict what's coming.

Well, 7 will hit, eventually, but only by pure luck. The chance of any given number hitting is the same with each roll of the ball: 38-to-1. If No. 11 comes up 1,000 times in a row, the chances of it coming again are 38-to-1.

Ditto for lotteries. You can play the same or a different number every day. You have the same chance of winning: practically none.

The Social Factor

On a social level, however, lotteries are bad as well. The state manipulates the impoverished, playing on their urge to get rich quick, to fill its coffers for dubious public projects it cannot afford. The public schools addling our children are always a big beneficiary of lotteries, which is why voters approve these games at the ballot box.

Anyway, most lottery players are those who can least afford to lose the money. If you don't think so, go into a 7-Eleven sometime and observe the professional lottery players on payday.

A typical scene is the halter-topped mother carting along a shirtless or shoeless toddler. With a six pack of Miller in one hand and a carton of Marlboros in the other, she rattles off the lottery combinations faster than a professional auctioneer. But she only earns minimum wage serving breakfast at a greasy spoon.

Point is, lotteries prey upon lower-income people of lower education level to bloat the state's coffers. The irony of using the revenues for public schools is this: The less savvy are skinned to build schools that don't educate their children. This, of course, ensures a steady supply of lottery players.

An Immoral Tax

The lottery shows just how far the megastate and its elected officials will go to augment their power.

They prey upon those in lower income brackets who don't realize they're getting ripped off, or that riches do not lie in a painted ping-pong ball bobbing on a jet of air in a plastic cylinder.

Lotteries should be abolished. As a friend of mine once said, they're a tax on the uninformed.


(This column courtesy of Agape Press.)

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