The Problem with Lotteries

Everybody likes to pitch lotteries. They seem so obvious. A voluntary game that will fund education–what could be wrong with that?

A lot. In fact, let’s call a lottery what it is: Soaking the poor to send more money to gluttonous bureaucrats.

There’s no free market involved. In a lottery, it’s the state and the state only, no competition allowed. And how does the state sell tickets? By encouraging people to gamble.

Arkansas, like other states, collects special taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, but imagine if our government started ad campaigns to encourage more people to buy these products in order to increase state revenues. We’d be outraged. Gambling brings with it no less misery than alcohol or cigarettes, so why would we permit the state to not only sanction it, but actually endorse and advertise it?

Calls for lotteries are symptomatic of government run amok. The bureaucrats want to buy more votes, and they’re willing to rip off the poorest voters to pay for them. I have a better idea: rein in the spending, lower our taxes and we’ll all have less need of those ill-gotten scholarships. Not everyone is willing to sell her vote for a college fund. That’s a cheap price for integrity.