The lottery is a game that involves drawing numbers or symbols to win prizes. It has a long history of being used for both commercial and public purposes. It is believed that the first publicly organized lotteries were held in the Low Countries in the 15th century, with one record of a raffle dated 9 May 1445 at Bruges for raising funds to build town walls and for the poor. The American founding fathers were big lottery players, with Benjamin Franklin organizing a lotto in Philadelphia in 1748 to raise money for his militia and John Hancock running a state-sponsored one in Virginia in 1767 to help fund construction of a road over a mountain pass.
The modern state-sponsored lottery was developed in the United States following the Revolutionary War, when the various states needed to find new revenue streams to pay for an expanding array of social safety net programs. The state governments quickly discovered that a surprisingly large proportion of the populace was willing to gamble a small sum in exchange for the chance to become very rich. Lotteries are a great way for government to take money from people without raising taxes, and they’ve worked so well that they’ve spread around the world.
When the winning numbers are announced on TV, the winners are always shown with a big smile and their hands raised in triumph. These images of happy people are a potent marketing tool that is used to convince the public that the lottery is a good thing. What these images obscure is that the lottery is a massively regressive form of taxation that disproportionately burdens lower-income households.
What the lottery does is dangle the promise of instant riches in front of people who are struggling to get by in today’s economy. It gives them hope that, irrational and mathematically impossible as it is, they will somehow turn their lives around if they can just hit the jackpot.
As a result, the lottery is popular with many who don’t see much prospect of a brighter future for themselves, particularly in a society that has become increasingly stratified by wealth. That’s why state politicians are eager to promote it, arguing that the proceeds will be earmarked for a particular purpose and that it is better than having to cut other public spending.
But critics argue that earmarking is deceptive: The legislature simply reduces the appropriations it would have otherwise allotted to the targeted program from the general fund, and the money “saved” remains in the general fund to be spent for any purpose it pleases. As a consequence, the lottery is a perfect example of the biblical prohibition on covetousness. It offers the false hope that money can buy everything – even happiness – and then leaves people wanting more. It is the ultimate bait and switch.
