They have in every single state , every single time.

Lotteries have raised billions of dollars, and of the 42 states that have them, 23 earmark all or some of the money for education.

For years, those states have heard complaints that not enough of their lottery revenue is used for education. Now, a New York Times examination of lottery documents, as well as interviews with lottery administrators and analysts, finds that lotteries accounted for less than 1 percent to 5 percent of the total revenue for K-12 education last year in the states that use this money for schools.

In reality, most of the money raised by lotteries is used simply to sustain the games themselves, including marketing, prizes and vendor commissions. And as lotteries compete for a small number of core players and try to persuade occasional customers to play more, nearly every state has increased, or is considering increasing, the size of its prizes — further shrinking the percentage of each dollar going to education and other programs.

In some states, lottery dollars have merely replaced money for education. Also, states eager for more players are introducing games that emphasize instant gratification and more potentially addictive forms of gambling.

I'll set aside the moral issues of gambling, because I do not believe gambling to be, per se, immoral. What i will point to instead is that little bit you may have missed in that last paragraph. The lottery dollars haven't supplemented the education budget -- they have simply changed the source of those dollars. This legislature appropriates those dollars for education and then shouts "Hallelujah! Look how generous we are being with the schools and the children." What they leave out is that they then shift an equal amount away from education and use it for other state expenditures, meaning that the schools in Texas really get a big nothing burger. And that is the case in many other states as well. When voters approved the lottery in those states, they were sold a bill of goods.

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Posted by: Greg at 01:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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