It serms incredible to me to give over a billion dollars to a random person.
State lotteries are in effect a tax on the uneducated; largely used to fund education.
But part of the reason they exist is that, in their absence, people spontaneously come up with even worse forms of gambling, like the old numbers game that funds the expansion of organized crime.
Most lottery players, especially scratch-ticket players, would be better off sticking that money under their mattresses or in credit-union accounts. However, again, when there are no gambling games around, people spontaneously invent them; abolishing state lotteries would not cause that money to go under mattresses or into credit unions.
Any gambling that isn’t regularly audited and controlled by the state. I work in the casino industry, I have sets of reports and evidence I have to run and provide to the state daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Then every two years they get a room in our building to full audit everything again end comb through everything we do to make sure we comply with all of the hundreds of controls across the 25 chapters in our gaming control book. Anything not subjected to and complying with that is illegal.
largely used to fund education
Alas, nope.
Many states have laws saying that for every lottery dollar that goes to education, a dollar comes out of the education budget. Usually lottery profits end up in a general fund, the whole education thing is a legislated smoke screen.
The main function of state run lotteries is to take money away from organized criminals and give it to elected criminals instead.
Most states, there’s this association that it supports education, but there’s this bizarre scheme where for every lottery dollar that goes into the education budget, $1 from the education budget comes back out into the general fund.
So you end up just robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of thing. It doesn’t actually add additional money to these causes that lotteries market themselves as helping.
a majority of the 42 states that run lotteries claim the games increase funding for education. But a CBS News investigation has found that most of the lottery sales never make it to a classroom.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-the-lottery-shortchanging-schools/
But when you take away the amount shelled out for prizes (60% on ticket sales) and the cut to the lottery dealers, along with fees and operating expenses, it leaves about one third of the handle ($3.37 billion) for “aid to education”.
Moreover, NYS Assemblyman David DiPietro (R-147th District) claims the money is not always used for education expenses, at least not in the traditional sense.
According to DiPietro, the money on occasion has been “pinched off” by the state, to pay for a variety of items, including attorney’s fees for construction projects and even to pave roads near schools.
