So what?
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please, sir, may I have some more?
The lottery sells people the false promise that they can become uber-wealthy without doing any work. All someone has to do is buy the right ticket, and they can become the lucky winner. However, lottery games do not exist to make you rich. While some people win millions of dollars gambling in state lotteries, the government is always the lottery's biggest winner.
The average adult in the United States spends $325 per year on lottery tickets. However, low-income people are more likely to play and spend a higher portion of their income on lottery tickets than the rest of the country.
In 2009, South Carolina households making under $40,000 per year were 53% of the state’s frequent lottery players despite being only 28% of the population. Living on under $40,000 is difficult. Given that most people who play the lottery lose, those people would be better off using that money to pay basic living expenses.
Additionally, households earning under $13,000 per year spent 9% of their income on lottery tickets, according to a 2012 report. Therefore, the lottery is taking money from people who need it to fund a government that presumably gives welfare benefits to many of these same people.
If you like paying taxes, then playing the lottery is fine. If you dislike paying taxes, however, consider spending that money elsewhere.
Meh. Who better to contribute to the cost of welfare than its recipients? If the dull, the stupid, and the lazy want to join with math illiterates to pitch in and fund the rapacious government maw, should we complain?
The politicians running lotteries know that they’ll be keeping most of the loot that’s generated — that’s why they sponsor them in the first place — but they also know that no one likes (paying) taxes, and soft-hearted liberals would shriek if the poor were compelled to pay back even a portion of the cost of their support, so a ruse that persuades those people to voluntarily fork over some of what’s been given them is a superb solution. In fact, between lotteries and the invisible tax of inflation, we could probably fund much of the government without ever raising taxe rates again.
