LANCASTER SUNDAY NEWS
An editorial, “Poor losers: Pennsylvania Lottery odds are stacked against the people who can least afford to play, as record amounts of money are taken in” concludes:
“Legalized gambling is a shell game in which the house always wins. That’s even more true of lotteries. State government should be ashamed of robbing poor Peter to support aging Paul.”
WATCHDOG: Of course they are right in their sentiment. However, apparently the editors are not old enough to recall that before we had a legalized state lottery, we had the ‘Numbers Racket.’
“By the early 20th century, the game was associated with poor communities, and could be played for as little as $0.01. One of the game’s attractions to low income and working class bettors was the ability to bet small amounts of money. Also, unlike state lotteries, bookies could extend credit to the bettor. In addition, policy winners could avoid paying income tax. Different policy banks would offer different rates, though a payoff of 600 to 1 was typical. Since the odds of winning were 1,000:1, the expected profit for racketeers was enormous.” Wikipedia
This supplied a welcome supplemental income for newsstands, barber shops and beauty parlours as well as tens of thousands of workers who went door to door in the inner city collecting funds and paying out winnings. The success of the state wide lottery is the diverting of funds from organized crime to our government (which some claim is disorganized crime!)
Perhaps the day will come when we will do the same with the sale of marijuana.
The LNP reported last week that lottery revenue exceeded $3billion in 2011, of which $960 million went to senior citizens. I really need to understand why less than 1 in 3 dollars goes to the taxpayers and where the majority of the revenue is lost. This ratio seems to be the reverse of what it should be.
As for marijuana sales by the state – I would welcome that, however, I wonder if those sales would be accompanied by the excessive onslaught of advertising that we now see with the state lottery – billboards, radio, television, etc.
Sadly it looks like we’ve taken the profits from an undesirable activity from one band of crooks to another.