this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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I understand the point of the meme and lottery is definitely commodifying hope, but a lot of the revenue generated does go towards social and education programs. In the US at least every state has their own system in place, but overwhelmingingly it goes towards funding education. Whether that money is spent responsibly from that trust is another story, but here's a state by state breakdown:
NPR - Lottery State by State
The problem is that this money tends to be used to justify lowering taxes. Schools don’t stay well funded
A lot of that revenue comes from desperate people that need money so they can avoid starving or homelessness. Even if it goes to a good cause, it's a tax on the poor by selling hope.
Exactly this. It's just a repackaging of a regressive tax system.
Lotteries don't actually fund education. That's just marketing to make the idea of lotteries more paletteable.
They will say that all proceeds from the lottery go to education. All that means is that the state's education budget must be greater than the lottery's profits.
If the lottery brings in $100 million, that does not mean schools will have $100 million more than they otherwise would. If the state was spending $250 million on education before the lottery, they could spend the same next year while still rightly claiming all of the lottery's $100 million went to education.
State budgets are based on the priorities of the legislature. If they don't prioritize education, a lottery won't change that. In practice, $100 million in lottery income means $100 million in tax cuts, or $100 million the legislature can spend elsewhere.
Know what else goes to social and educational programs and can be progressively implemented to collect from the wealthy instead of the poor?
TAXES.
No fair, using reasoning instead of justification!
(J/k, it is absolutely fair and I love it:-)
On top of what else is said, it perpetuates the ridiculous Republican idea that we can all be millionaires one day.
You may have noticed that being a millionaire is not the sign of real wealth anymore. To be actually wealthy, you need to be a billionaire or at least half-billionaire. Honestly, a middle class person approaching retirement is supposed to be worth a million just to expect to maintain their middle class lifestyle through retirement and into death. Otherwise either their children or the government supports them, probably at a vastly reduced lifestyle.
You can select any random thing from the state budget, and any random amount of money coming in, and say "this revenue is going to fund this program." It's just a way to justify the lottery, sort of making it sound like if they shut down the lottery then they'd have to reduce funding for the schools as a result, when in reality there's no such relationship.
In addition tovwhat is already said, its a way to have the poor pay for those programs instead of the rich adding further to income disparity.
Then they use the lottery money (which varies depending on the state of the economy) to justify underfunding those same social programs. So you can't even guarantee that they programs will have a stable budget from year to year, something that's necessary for these programs to be noisy effective? And what do you do when the economy tanks, suddenly more people than ever need benefits, but there's even less money coming in, you're not in a position to raise taxes (and it would take time even if you were), and your state constitution mandates that you have a balanced budget?
Fund things like the salaries and retirement funds of politicians out of the lottery, not the livelihoods of teachers and the well-being of those who desperately need public services.