6 ms·

> "But protecting people by ending lotteries isn’t a practical solution: If anything, gambling and state-run lotteries are growing enterprises in the United Sta

> "But protecting people by ending lotteries isn’t a practical solution: If anything, gambling and state-run lotteries are growing enterprises in the United States and many other countries." What are the practical problems with banning state-run lotteries as they currently exist? The article doesn't explain this assertion. Is it just realpoltik pessimism over the ability to change the status quo and get state governments to give up an unethical source of revenue? Or is this a standard "prohibition creates criminal opportunity" issue? The idea of gamified savings accounts seems very interesting. Legalizing gamified savings accounts while also banning traditional state-run lotteries seems like a decent idea to me.

rusbus 8y ago
I think the primary issue is replacing the revenue stream the finances along with a host of other state government provided sources. Simultaneously raising taxes and banning the lottery could be a very difficult move politically.
xapata 8y ago
Why tie the two policies together? Gamified savings accounts seems like a good idea on its own.
- xapata 8y ago
  I'm somewhat confused by the downvote. The article seemed to provide compelling evidence that lotteryesque savings accounts encourage savings, especially among populations who save the least. I'll again ask: Why would such a policy need be coupled with the removal of state lotteries? One could implement it and get benefit regardless of the traditional lottery.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    I think you're right, there is no reason the two must necessarily be connected. Although I think the legalization of gamified savings accounts might provide an opportunity to ban state-run lotteries.
hristov 8y ago
"Or is this a standard "prohibition creates criminal opportunity" issue?" This is exactly it. And it is not something that should be dismissed, it has pretty much been proven correct. In the US, before state run lotteries were present and popular, there were criminal run "numbers games" which were quite similar to lotteries but with much worse payout ratios and where the criminals that ran them often refused to pay for various reasons. In the Scorcesse classic movie "Mean Streets" one of the storylines is about a kid that wins one of those numbers games but the person that runs the game refuses to pay him because he is of a mixed race. Numbers games are very rare in the US nowadays and when present are only present in poor immigrant communities that do not know much about the state run lotteries. The state run lotteries did a pretty good job of getting rid of the numbers games and thus depriving organized crime of a source of revenue while providing better odds of success for lottery players and also taking in money for the government and thus saving taxpayer money. The original lottery idea was also reasonably effective at keeping individual betting volumes low. They did this by making sure that each ticket was relatively cheap and required relatively large amount of work to determine the winner. Thus it was hard for someone to buy many tickets. Unfortunately, this is something that has slowly been eroding as lottery systems try to get more revenue and encourage compulsive buying. So no I do not think state lotteries should be banned but it may be a good idea to change the rules for advertising or the games themselves to discourage individuals from blowing too much money on them.
- warent 8y ago
  This is a very useful perspective on the positives of lotteries. I've always found them to be bogus, borderline theft. But when you consider the fact that it mitigates--almost entirely removing--more shady versions of the game, it makes lotteries seem more like a necessary evil for the time being. However, that's not to say that the government couldn't do a better job of educating the public on it. Lotteries are definitely aggrandized with all the bells and whistles to make people feel like they have a real shot at winning which I would argue could draw in people who wouldn't have played--lottery, numbers games, or otherwise.
  - tareqak 8y ago
towelr34dy 8y ago
> Or is this a standard "prohibition creates criminal opportunity" issue? I'd say it's a bad idea because... and hear me out... people will still have lottery. I present as evidence to my argument the prohibition on drugs, sports betting and prostitution. You can add in homosexuality where it is prohibited. And this even happens in places under penalty of death. Trying to restrict willing, consenting adults from titillating their senses in private transactions in private property... has been a spectacular failure. I know, you probably know better for these people than they do. But we are stuck in a world with what seems like humans that enjoy (or suffer from) free will. How many times does the social experiment of restricting these titillation have to be carried out with all it's high costs before we figure out it isn't worth it.
pehtis 8y ago
Lotteries work like a social safety valve. They give hope to the poor that there is a chance, however small, that they will make it big and sort out their financial problems just by winning the lottery. And so they keep working and trying and living their lives despite the fact that there is basically zero chance of ever earning enough money, because: "Someone wins the lottery every week! Next week it could be me!!".
- kbenson 8y ago
  It's interesting to note that given the oft cited statistic that lotteries are disproportionally consumed by the poor, that amount they are disporportionally consumed and how that statistic is come by might not lead to the conclusions people often jump to: The data reveal the following general trends. First, lottery gambling extends across races, sexes, and income and education groups. Second, black respondents spend nearly twice as much on lottery tickets as do white or Hispanic respondents. The average re- ported expenditure among blacks is $200 per year ($476 among those who played the lottery last year). Black men have the highest average expenditures. Third, average annual lottery spending in dollar amounts is roughly equal across the low- est, middle, and highest income groups. This implies that on average, low–income households spend a larger percentage of their wealth on lottery tickets than other households.[1] Those in the lowest fifth in terms of socioeconomic status (SES) had the “highest rate of lottery gambling (61%) and the highest mean level of days gambled in the past year (26.1 days).” Moreover, there were “very few observed differences in lottery gambling for those in the three upper SES groups — 42–43% gambled on the lottery and the three upper groups averaged about 10 days of gambling on the lottery in the past year.”[2] It's clear that the poorest people may more, and it's more of their relative income, but it's not anywhere near rate for other income groups to play as well. The real interesting take-aways I see are what you get when you look at the following two facts (shown above): - The lowest quartile income group only plays about 50% more often than the other quartiles (~60% compared to ~40%). - Each tertile income group spends approximately the same amount of real dollars. With these, it starts to look a lot less like some tax on the poor and/or stupid that people like to classify it as, and more as a cultural phenomenon (or something that plays to the human psychology, since I think it's fairly common in most cultures). It may indeed be that the lottery works as an aspirational tool, as you note. But I think it must also be working in other ways, otherwise I'm not sure why we would see such large investment from higher income groups as well. 1: https://www.ntanet.org/NTJ/58/2/ntj-v58n02p281-302-economic-winners-losers-legalized.pdf https://www.ntanet.org/NTJ/58/2/ntj-v58n02p281-302-economic-... 2: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-finance/research-review-lotteries-demographics/ https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-f...

rusbus 8y ago

I think the primary issue is replacing the revenue stream the finances along with a host of other state government provided sources. Simultaneously raising taxes and banning the lottery could be a very difficult move politically.

xapata 8y ago

Why tie the two policies together? Gamified savings accounts seems like a good idea on its own.

xapata 8y ago
I'm somewhat confused by the downvote. The article seemed to provide compelling evidence that lotteryesque savings accounts encourage savings, especially among populations who save the least. I'll again ask: Why would such a policy need be coupled with the removal of state lotteries? One could implement it and get benefit regardless of the traditional lottery.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  I think you're right, there is no reason the two must necessarily be connected. Although I think the legalization of gamified savings accounts might provide an opportunity to ban state-run lotteries.

hristov 8y ago

"Or is this a standard "prohibition creates criminal opportunity" issue?" This is exactly it. And it is not something that should be dismissed, it has pretty much been proven correct. In the US, before state run lotteries were present and popular, there were criminal run "numbers games" which were quite similar to lotteries but with much worse payout ratios and where the criminals that ran them often refused to pay for various reasons. In the Scorcesse classic movie "Mean Streets" one of the storylines is about a kid that wins one of those numbers games but the person that runs the game refuses to pay him because he is of a mixed race. Numbers games are very rare in the US nowadays and when present are only present in poor immigrant communities that do not know much about the state run lotteries. The state run lotteries did a pretty good job of getting rid of the numbers games and thus depriving organized crime of a source of revenue while providing better odds of success for lottery players and also taking in money for the government and thus saving taxpayer money. The original lottery idea was also reasonably effective at keeping individual betting volumes low. They did this by making sure that each ticket was relatively cheap and required relatively large amount of work to determine the winner. Thus it was hard for someone to buy many tickets. Unfortunately, this is something that has slowly been eroding as lottery systems try to get more revenue and encourage compulsive buying. So no I do not think state lotteries should be banned but it may be a good idea to change the rules for advertising or the games themselves to discourage individuals from blowing too much money on them.

warent 8y ago
This is a very useful perspective on the positives of lotteries. I've always found them to be bogus, borderline theft. But when you consider the fact that it mitigates--almost entirely removing--more shady versions of the game, it makes lotteries seem more like a necessary evil for the time being. However, that's not to say that the government couldn't do a better job of educating the public on it. Lotteries are definitely aggrandized with all the bells and whistles to make people feel like they have a real shot at winning which I would argue could draw in people who wouldn't have played--lottery, numbers games, or otherwise.
- tareqak 8y ago

towelr34dy 8y ago

> Or is this a standard "prohibition creates criminal opportunity" issue? I'd say it's a bad idea because... and hear me out... people will still have lottery. I present as evidence to my argument the prohibition on drugs, sports betting and prostitution. You can add in homosexuality where it is prohibited. And this even happens in places under penalty of death. Trying to restrict willing, consenting adults from titillating their senses in private transactions in private property... has been a spectacular failure. I know, you probably know better for these people than they do. But we are stuck in a world with what seems like humans that enjoy (or suffer from) free will. How many times does the social experiment of restricting these titillation have to be carried out with all it's high costs before we figure out it isn't worth it.

pehtis 8y ago

Lotteries work like a social safety valve. They give hope to the poor that there is a chance, however small, that they will make it big and sort out their financial problems just by winning the lottery. And so they keep working and trying and living their lives despite the fact that there is basically zero chance of ever earning enough money, because: "Someone wins the lottery every week! Next week it could be me!!".

kbenson 8y ago
It's interesting to note that given the oft cited statistic that lotteries are disproportionally consumed by the poor, that amount they are disporportionally consumed and how that statistic is come by might not lead to the conclusions people often jump to: The data reveal the following general trends. First, lottery gambling extends across races, sexes, and income and education groups. Second, black respondents spend nearly twice as much on lottery tickets as do white or Hispanic respondents. The average re- ported expenditure among blacks is $200 per year ($476 among those who played the lottery last year). Black men have the highest average expenditures. Third, average annual lottery spending in dollar amounts is roughly equal across the low- est, middle, and highest income groups. This implies that on average, low–income households spend a larger percentage of their wealth on lottery tickets than other households.[1] Those in the lowest fifth in terms of socioeconomic status (SES) had the “highest rate of lottery gambling (61%) and the highest mean level of days gambled in the past year (26.1 days).” Moreover, there were “very few observed differences in lottery gambling for those in the three upper SES groups — 42–43% gambled on the lottery and the three upper groups averaged about 10 days of gambling on the lottery in the past year.”[2] It's clear that the poorest people may more, and it's more of their relative income, but it's not anywhere near rate for other income groups to play as well. The real interesting take-aways I see are what you get when you look at the following two facts (shown above): - The lowest quartile income group only plays about 50% more often than the other quartiles (~60% compared to ~40%). - Each tertile income group spends approximately the same amount of real dollars. With these, it starts to look a lot less like some tax on the poor and/or stupid that people like to classify it as, and more as a cultural phenomenon (or something that plays to the human psychology, since I think it's fairly common in most cultures). It may indeed be that the lottery works as an aspirational tool, as you note. But I think it must also be working in other ways, otherwise I'm not sure why we would see such large investment from higher income groups as well. 1: https://www.ntanet.org/NTJ/58/2/ntj-v58n02p281-302-economic-winners-losers-legalized.pdf https://www.ntanet.org/NTJ/58/2/ntj-v58n02p281-302-economic-... 2: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-finance/research-review-lotteries-demographics/ https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/personal-f...