State lotteries transfer wealth out of needy communities, investigation finds

The argument for the state having a monopoly on lotteries is that if there wasn’t a legal lottery illegal lotteries would proliferate. Thus to protect people, the state should run it as it would then be guaranteed to be fair and free of the criminal element (mobsters, etc.). Ideally, the lotto would just take in enough to pay the winners and administrative expenses. However, most states have abused this monopoly and just see it as an alternative source of revenue, which turns it into a regressive tax.

State lotteries should be small, should not be advertised and should not be sources of revenue for the state.

This is true as is the nature of "food deserts" in the poorer neighbors, at least where I live – there are higher concentrations of convenience stores, drive-thrus, and gas stations that feature items like tobacco products, alcohol, and lottery tickets that similarly exploit the local populations impulse purchases and eat up what little income they earn from two or more low-paying jobs.

It's viciously cyclical and those sin-taxed items all promote bad habits, harm physical, mental, and spiritual health, and perpetuate check-to-check living and discourage savings. It makes sense to me because many folks in these communities rely on public transit and/or walk to where they need to go, so they buy from what's available.

This is the dark side of liberty where we see that people do not always choose the best options from those available to them when impulse buys are offered , or sometimes, there is far less to choose from for certain populations to begin with.

I recognize I'm oversimplifying and probably have committed more than a few gross stereotypical statements, but I am distressed to see the conditions in a lot of these neighbors, not for me, but because of what I imagine it must be like for a lot of folks who don't have the same opportunities to rise up simply due to the circumstances of their birth.

There is absolutely no good in the lottery and it should be abolished. Any alleged good for education or other programs is more than countered by the harm it does to the lower income populations. Education should be paid for from taxes, and just raise taxes if necessary. My guess is that the money that comes from lotteries don't usually end-up benefiting that much.

If it makes your friend feel better, lottery winners more often than not destroy their own lives.

It’s honestly shocking how many facets of American culture are predicated on addiction for profit. Alcohol, food, social media, gaming, opioids, cannabis, nicotine, gambling. It is extraordinarily difficult to find a sense of perspective independent of the influence of these industries.

There's an interesting theory that the solution to this is to subsidize the lottery and improve the odds significantly. Take to the extreme and you could essentially implement UBI this way.

I also don't think poor people are wrong to think a chance of getting a life-changing amount of money is a worthwhile luxury spend compared to the other available options. They may be wrong about the probability, but instead of fixing that with education, we could fix it by making the probability closer to people's intuition.

Given the well-known issues with means testing, randomly assigning the payouts instead might be a significant improvement.