Lotteries have become a popular form of entertainment in many states and nations. They are marketed as a harmless and risk-free way to make money, and they have two enormous selling points: They offer a shortcut to wealth, and they allow people to raise funds for their governments without paying additional taxes. Lotteries are now operated in over forty states, and their profits fund a variety of state programs.
In the United States, lotteries are regulated by state legislatures and operate as a type of government monopoly. Unlike privately-operated games such as poker or horse races, lottery profits are used solely for public purposes and are not distributed to winners as profit or income. As of August 2004, nearly all states have a lottery, and participants can purchase tickets anywhere in the country.
Cohen explains that the modern lottery started in the nineteen-sixties, when growing awareness of all the money to be made in gambling collided with a crisis in state funding. The immediate post-World War II era had seen states expand their social safety nets while maintaining relatively low tax rates on the middle and working classes. But in the wake of inflation, rising poverty rates, and the cost of the Vietnam War, that arrangement began to break down. Many states could no longer balance their budgets without either raising taxes or cutting services, and both options were highly unpopular with voters.
The answer, according to Cohen, was the lottery. Lottery revenues rose from one billion dollars in 1967 to five trillion dollars in 2003. In fiscal year 2003, New York led the nation in total sales, followed by Massachusetts and Texas. The states that run their own lotteries are not above availing themselves of the psychology of addiction: The look and feel of a ticket, the math behind it, and the ad campaigns are all designed to keep players hooked. This isn’t so different from what tobacco or video-game manufacturers do to keep their products in the hands of consumers.
People play the lottery because they like to gamble. But there’s more to it than that. The lottery offers the promise of a short cut to success and riches in an era of inequality and limited social mobility. This is a dangerous combination. People who play the lottery spend far more than they can afford to lose, and in doing so contribute billions of dollars to government coffers that might be better spent on education, retirement savings, or infrastructure projects.
Those who object to the lottery do so for a variety of reasons. Some are religiously or morally opposed to any kind of gambling, and some may believe that a governmental endorsement of a game violates their liberties. Others, however, simply think that the odds of winning are astronomically high and the prospect of instant riches is too tempting to pass up. In the end, however, the most troubling aspect of the lottery is not its likelihood of success or its impact on society, but the fact that it encourages poor people to spend more of their income than they can afford to lose.