Shame of it All

State lotteries should be illegal; everywhere. Lotteries are a voluntary tax based on a fraud. That is why lotteries are immoral.  All the publicity of the recent campaign, compounds the travesty of the lottery. Vulnerable people, mostly poor and ignorant feel a simple ticket purchase, which very well might take food off the table, will send their ship home. Do they really understand the odds of one chance in 176 million ? As the deadline drew near, the numbers of suckers swelled as the media poured it on at every opportunity.

Just look at the demographics of who plays the lottery ! Do physicans, attorneys, educators, professionals of all stripes play the lottery in signficant numbers ? Of course not !  Lottery players are the bottom soci-economic rug of society.

Sometimes, the lottery proceeds is marketed as a contribution to lift people and give them opportunities. Thus, the brand name “education” lottery.

But, approximately half of the lottery proceeds go to administration. That is more inefficient than any government I know anywhere. The remainder provides tax relief for some of the very people who should be paying more taxes, as the lottery, in reality, is a very brutal regressive tax.