Once again NC is embroiled in a debate over implementing a state-run lottery. The current argument in favor of creating one is that it would quickly raise some much-needed capital and we’d quit losing millions to VA’s lottery.
Ostensibly the profits would go fully towards education, but considering that state gov’t models its behavior after the federal’s (ie: all money is basically in a great big pot, and no fund is ever a true “lock-box” - see “Social Security”), I expect lotto funds would just end up as the pea in yet another shell game.
Personally, I’m against a state-run lottery for a number of reasons. The big one is that I’d much rather have the gov’t do something novel and try actually being fiscally responsible for a change - if you’re running out of money, quit spending so damn much. We citizens have to follow this rule, so should da gummint.
But I also believe that a state-run lottery is foremost a tax on the stupid. And if my fellow Tarheels are willing to be fools soon parted from their money, well what the hey…
So anyway (he said while climbing down from his soapbox), I’m posting this in order to hear from Dopers in states whose governments have officially gone into the gambling business. Have your gullible fellow citizens turned into the overflowing cash cow your legislators anticipated? Is it actually profitable? Are the funds going where they were originally intended?
The Florida Lottery was supposed to augment education… naturally, the education part of the budget shrank as the lottery pot grew. However, in the last few years, they’ve instituted the Bright Futures Scholarship to be paid from lottery bucks. This is a non-competitive scholarship based upon GPA, SAT/ACT, and community service, and can mean a full ride plus $600/year towards expenses. Since my Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] is well on her way to earning one of these, I’m very pleased.
And yes, I play the lottery occasionally. However, since pay-at-the-pump has been instituted at most convenience stores here, I have to make a special trip inside to buy tickets. Can’t remember the last time I did.
The lottery folks here in Colorado spend a lot of money advertising all the parks and recreation areas that recieve our lottery dollars. I’ve never heard anybody refute that so I guess it’s true.
Frankly, I don’t care if there’s a state lottery - sometimes called the “tax on people who are bad at math”.
For a buck I can buy a chance at millions - I do it two or three times a year. Big deal.
I’m fully aware that there’s folks spending money on lottery tickets that they can’t really afford - spending the rent, grocery money or college fund. I also believe, though, in the premise that adults can make their own decisions on that issue.
WVians spend big bucks on the lottery here. Why? Because most of them think they will win, and most of them want something for nothing. (Hence why our litigation numbers are through the roof and doctors are running screaming out of the state to PA, KY, and OH.)
Is the money going where it should? Of course not.
The schools suck.
“We’ll start a lottery and the money will be used for the kids.”
I live in Georgia and I love our lotto because it pays for my college tuition. The lotto money here goes mainly to the HOPE scholarship (if a Georgia resident has a B avg. in HS and keeps it in college and you go to a public college the state pays every dime of your tuition and gives you some book money) and the state preschools (glorified day care). If the lotto is a tax on the stupid then the stupid citizens of my state are paying for the smart citizens to go to school.
I’m in favor of the lottery because I feel that dumb people shouldn’t have money. If it means that millions of dumb people have to lose a little money and one dumb person gets a lot of money, well, that’s fine. Odds are that one dumb person won’t have it for long anyway, as smarter people rob him blind.
One local news item mentioned that two Tennessee grade school teachers moved to Georgia to teach, & their income went up more than 35%. Even though they no longer merited longveity raises or bonuses
:eek:
We need a lottery.
The religious types are fighting tooth & nail to block it.
We have legal lottery run video poker here in Oregon. I probably know at least twenty people that have addiction issues with it - including one woman who spends over a GRAND a week playing. Nearly every bar in the state has five machines, so it’s a huge business. I worked as a bartender and saw many a spouse come in and drag the other spouse out of the bar, away from the machines. I know of a few divorces caused by it, and many many other horror stories - I remember talking to one woman who wanted to use our house phone, then proceeded to call about 20 people asking them if she could borrow $50. Someone agreed, she left, came back, and lost $50 in the poker machine. I also had a man come in one day yelling and screaming because his wife had cleared their checking account max via our ATM that afternoon, then used the card as POS, and drained it the rest of the way (actually he had the wrong bar, but I felt horrible for that guy.)
I have my doubts that there’s really a lot of benefit to anyone from lottery proceeds, especially since the “free help for gambling addiction program” is funded by lottery funds. I’m sure that takes a pretty good sized chunk out of the profit.
I hate video poker. Buying lotto tickets is fine to me, as you’re (probably) not sitting there, hour after hour dumping cash into it.
Merv Griffin Enterprises came and set up a riverboat casino on the Ohio in western Kentucky several years ago. Now it’s a Harrah’s.
At the time my mother and Stanley, my friend, worked there (1998 and part of 99), it was taking in 12 million a month (an ENORMOUS amount of money for such a little area). They paid their employees 6 bucks an hour max and the change attendants saw maybe 5% of their tips on their paychecks.
Not to mention that #*%(#% boat ruined many families. Divorces, people losing homes, etc. etc. No, nobody forces anybody to gamble but it’s hard for a life to be destroyed by gambling when it isn’t available.
Why is everyone complaining that lottery proceeds have to go to a noble cause, such as education?
I view the state lottery as a means by which stupid people pay some of my taxes for me. I don’t have any problem with the money just going into the state’s regular funds.
Gambling is a stupid way to “invest” your money, and I despise stupid people. I am very pleased to see them give their money away.
On the other hand, I always thought the general principle behind the government’s involvement in gambling is “People will gamble anyway; let’s make it legal and honest.”
If that’s the case, then why does my state ADVERTISE its lottery on the radio? Voluntary stupidity is great, but I can’t condone my own government deliberately conning stupid people out of their money.
Well, first of all, you taxes go to education too, but I’m deliberately misunderstanding you so don’t feel bad.
I’d think that the primary reason that many Floridians complain that the Lottery money should go to a noble cause is because that was the entire point beind starting the Lottery in Florida. Unfortunately, politicians are politicians, and much less money goes to the Education fund than was promised. In addition, the current administration figures that since there’s all this lottery moeny coming in, they can go ahead and cut some of the other money that was earmarked for education.
As a result Florida has one of the worst educational systems in the nation, despite the widely advertised “We’ve raised $6 billion for education with the lottery” party line. In fact, and no I don’t have a cite because I’m lazy and I’m quoting an ariticle I read 6 months ago, less than 2 billion has been actually spent on schools since the lotto’s inception in 1989.
As for the stupid people thing, that’s what they get for being a dumbass. I condone the government taking advantage of stupid people in any way shape and form possible. In fact, I’d love for the government to legalize pryamid scams so that I can start a couple and get rich off the stupid people too.
State lotteries suck. They are a inefficient way relieve poor, ignorant, or desperate people of their meager money. They should not exist. Neither should the entire gambling industry, especially the “Indian” casinos which have sprung up all over the country. They are all a net loss for society. Gambling should have been left to Nevada casinos, race tracks, and bookies.
New York had a lottery when I was growing up, and Texas has had one for a decade or so. In both states, I’ve seen the same phenomenon: the poorest people in the state shell out money for lottery tickets. The people on line to buy the tickets are invariably, black, Latino, and/or elderly.
I know there’s no way to protect people from their own foolishness, so I suppose I can understand decriminalizing gambling. But I cannot abide the idea of state governments spending a fortune on advertising, to convince already poor people to spend their money on a contest they have almost no chance of winning.
My feeling is, IF state legislators decide a program is worthy of funding, they should have the guts to raise taxes to pay for it. Lotteries are a cowardly way out.
As a North Carolina resident, intellectually I have no problems with the lottery. I do have problems with letting those schmoes in the General Assembly handle it. Frankly, as Tygr pointed out, their money management skills are nil. I don’t believe for one minute that the bulk of the money would go toward education in any substantial way. More likely, given their track record, they would suddenly discover that the DOT needs to embark on yet more road-widening projects. (walks away muttering about the rackin-frackin so-and-so state legislators)
Car insurance is a stupid tax. The lottery is a hope of escape whose impossibility is only overshadowed by RPG end-of-the-world plots.
Someone wins the lottery almost every other week. I suggest all of you find these hundreds of lottery winners and tell them what complete buffoons they are.
I buy a few tickets every week. No big deal. I know the odds; 1.38 million to one on a 10-ticket 6/49. It’s fun to dream, and I can afford it with ease.
However, I admit the government’s becoming addicted to gambling revenues as a source of income. This is taking entertainment dollars away from real businesses, so it’s not as if all this money is just magically appearing in the government coffers.
As a CA resident, I’d like to comment on the nature of the game itself. When the first large jackpot game, “Lotto 6/49” was introduced, people had a better chance of winning, and the jackpots didn’t rollover so often. Of course the chances of winning a jackpot were still infinitesimal, but you had a better chance of winning smaller prizes than you do today. At that time, I used to buy 4 tickets a week, or two for each game. Several times a year I’d win the $5 prize for having three matches out of six. About twice a year I’d hit four numbers, and win anywhere from $50 to $75. So at least that way there was a little giveback, just as with casino gambling.
But after a few years, they lengthened the odds tremendously, so now the game is called “6/53”, meaning that you have to match 6 numbers out of a field of 53, instead of 49. Casual players, buying no more than a few tickets a week, can almost never hope to win even small prizes, so more and more, they’re not bothering. If you match three numbers, you still only win $5, even though the odds have been lengthened several thousandfold. Who would fall for such ridiculous odds and payouts, but the least educated? It’s almost as if they should prohibit anyone above certain levels of education and income from playing, because that’s turning out to be the net result.
Another Rallee resident here. I’m in favor of the lottery, because I don’t see how it can make anything worse.
Stupidity Tax: how much money do the stupid have? It’s a net negative amount, I’m willing to bet. They’re already thousands of dollars in debt each anyway, from buying V8 Fords, 48" TVs, and $3500 barbeque grills. How is a lottery going to make them any worse off than they are now?
Actual money allocation: Since when have we ever trusted our legislators to properly allocate our tax dollars? A lottery at least gives them another pool of dollars to draw from, so maybe they’ll forget about leeching Social Security funds or conducting deficit spending.
What gets me is that the issue is never brought up for popular vote. If legislators are so afraid that supporting the lottery will cost them their seats, this can at least be blamed on the voters if it were made a public referendum.
Also, I don’t get the hipocracy here…why do our lawmakers overlook the fact that money is being lost to neighboring states but have no qualms about taxing us on goods that weren’t produced in state? You buy something online, you gotta pay NC tax, because you’re denying our precious state potential revenue.
javaman, I’ve played the CA lottery only a few times while I was there, but isn’t there also a $5 payoff for matching the, um, super=special-bonus number thingy? I know I actually got that one once, and felt happy that I finally won something.
[sub]Of course, I then promptly lost the ticket.[/sub]