January 04, 2007

Random Commuter Observations

I notice that at the end of the radio ads for its various lotto games, the Virginia Lottery has taken to adding the tag line, "The Virginia Lottery - helping Virginia's public schools."

This irks me.

Sure, you can argue that the money goes to a good cause, as does the Virginia Lottery itself:

In Fiscal Year 2006, the Virginia Lottery had record sales of over $1.3 billion. Of this total, the Lottery contributed $454.9 Million, or 33.3%, to public education grades K-12. 56% went back to players in the form of prizes, 5.6% went to the retailers who sell Virginia Lottery tickets, and 5.1% went to operational expenses.

The fact of the matter remains, however, that guv'mint lotteries are nasty, pernicious, regressive wealth redistribution schemes, funded in large part by people who really have no business throwing money away on lotto tickets. That the money is being spent (at least for the moment) "for the Children" doesn't take away from this fact. I can't help but think about it every time I hear the Va. Lottery trumpeting its faux saintliness.

Posted by Robert at January 4, 2007 09:12 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I noticed their new tagline myself and was similarly annoyed. I can't help but wonder if they think that people who normally wouldn't play the lottery are, all of the sudden, going to start routinely plunking down their cash because, oh gosh, it's for the schools. Shopping at Giant can help the schools, and I still try to avoid that like the plague.

Posted by: beth at January 4, 2007 09:22 AM

Cor, I'd only been thinking in terms of their attempt to make themselves look respectable. I didn't consider the follow-on that they might actually be trying to get me to pony up.

That may also explain why they were offering lottery subscriptions as potential Christmas presents this year.

Posted by: Robbo the LB at January 4, 2007 12:40 PM

This sounds like a suspiciously non-conservative position. Free market, free will, blah, blah, and all that...

Posted by: LB Buddy at January 4, 2007 01:59 PM

What I've noticed from one state's annual budgets is that they earmark less and less from the general fund to to to schools, letting the growth in lottery income to pick up the slack. So in total, school spending doesn't change that much but the sources do.

Posted by: ken at January 4, 2007 02:18 PM

The Virginia Lottery: Taxing Ignorance To Promote Education.

State-sponsored gambling is a issue that cuts across the conservative-liberal divide. You can make conservative arguments for or against, and you can make liberal arguments for or against.

I consider myself a Conservative, but state lotteries offend me for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it sets up a government monopoly, with all the inherent inefficiency and corruption that implies. I also don't like the notion of government having a revenue source directly tied to a human vice --government itself is enough of one. The more sources of revenue that the government has which are free from scrutiny by the taxpayer -- which lotteries largely are -- tend to promote the unfettered growth of government, with all the evil that implies.

Mainly, though, I hate them because of the bastards in front of me in line at the convenience store who waste my time by buying lottery tickets/cashing them in/generating numbers, etc.

Posted by: colossus@colossusblog.com at January 6, 2007 04:42 AM