Lottery is a game of chance that gives players the illusion of instant riches. It’s a form of gambling, and some governments outlaw it while others endorse it to the extent of organizing state-run lotteries. In the United States, where it’s hard to find an area that doesn’t have a lottery, people spend more than $80 billion a year on tickets. The odds of winning are very low, but the publicity surrounding huge jackpots and frequent TV ads entice people to buy — often even those who wouldn’t gamble otherwise.
Lotteries have been around a long time. The oldest recorded occurrence, from the fourteen-hundreds, is in the Low Countries, where they were used to raise money for town fortifications and charity for the poor. By the seventeen-hundreds, the practice had spread to England and America, despite Protestant church laws against gambling.
In the nineteen-sixties, as Cohen recounts, a growing awareness of the potential profits in the gambling business collided with a crisis in state funding. As population growth and inflation accelerated, many state budgets began to strain, and balancing the books became more difficult than ever. At the same time, voters were becoming more tax averse, and many favored cutting services over raising taxes.
As a result, lawmakers and activists searched for ways to increase revenues without angering the electorate. Lotteries provided the perfect solution. By giving people the opportunity to win large sums of money with very small probabilities, they would be more likely to accept higher taxes, the reasoning went.
It was a popular argument, and a lot of people bought it. By the mid-nineteen-sixties, states began to pass laws legalizing the lottery. New Hampshire was first, and the trend spread quickly across the Northeast and Rust Belt, fueled by a backlash against taxes that had grown especially steep in the wake of the Vietnam War.
Those who criticize the lottery argue that it’s morally wrong for government to promote vices, especially those with addiction potential. But they have to acknowledge that gambling isn’t nearly as harmful as alcohol or cigarettes, two other vices that governments endorse for revenue. And, besides, no one forces people to play the lottery — they do it for themselves.
Lottery proponents point out that, in addition to monetary prizes, the games offer entertainment value and social connection. If the combined utility of monetary and non-monetary rewards exceeds the disutility of the loss, then buying a ticket is a rational decision. But even if that’s true, there are still ethical concerns about the way lottery proceeds are managed. For one thing, the marketing strategies favored by the industry are based on psychology — the same kind of techniques employed by video-game makers and tobacco companies. And, despite the success of state lotteries, a large number of Americans are still struggling to make ends meet. They should be better off using their money to build emergency savings or pay down credit card debt, rather than buying Powerball tickets.