A new high

For the lottery and for ignorance

The director of the Arkansas Lottery and legal numbers racket sounded gleeful the other day when he proudly proclaimed that the lottery had broke all records for the month of August this year, and raked in a total revenue of nearly $50 million last month alone. Whe-e-e! We’re all winners if one excludes the very real possibility that we’re really all losers and are deluding ourselves. Except if you’re the house. The house always wins.

The Arkansas Lottery has taken in more than $700 million in order to finance college scholarships since it started selling Lives of the Rich and Famous way back in 2009. “We obviously had a huge month in Powerball sales due to the jackpot,” said Bishop Woosley, referring to last month’s $750-million-plus Powerball jackpot, which went to somebody not in Arkansas.

The size of the jackpot wasn’t the only variable that accounted for the lottery’s take, according to Bishop Woosley, for he also noted that the sellers of lottery tickets at sites like convenience stores and supermarkets are now allowed to accept debit cards in payment for the tickets they peddle to an all too trusting public. Which will get us all used to using plastic to buy lottery tickets, and the sky’s the limit!

Surpassing $700 million in proceeds is definitely a milestone, pronounced this presiding bishop of the Arkansas Lottery in his sermon of a press release, “but we just love that it means more scholarships for Arkansas students, and more people in Arkansas having fun playing the games.” Yep, give ’ em a happy ending every time, even if there’s more than one catch to it in reality.

Having fun? Can the valued readers of Arkansas’ Newspaper have taken a close look at the kind of people lining up regularly to spend their grocery money or maybe the rent on lottery tickets? They look less like a happygo-lucky crowd at the track than folks desperate to make that one big killing that’ll solve all their financial problems if they could just get ahold of that one winning lottery ticket. Talk about magical thinking, these poor folks are perfect examples of that practice.

It’s enough to make one wonder: What’s the use of all these college scholarships if they don’t teach the poor suckers better than to invest in a get-rich-quick scheme of winning the lottery? According to information in “Powerbull: The lottery loves poverty” in the Aug. 28 Wall Street Journal, Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute puts the odds of some poor shnook’s winning the recent Powerball jackpot at one in 292 million. Economist Melissa Kearney of the University of Maryland put the average return on a dollar lottery ticket at only 52 cents. There are enough fallacies in the decision to bet on buying the winning lottery tickets to fill whole textbooks of economics rather than anybody’s pocket.

Here is professional economist Mr. Brooks’ conclusion: “It might strike you as bizarre that the government spends billions on nutrition and housing programs for the poor while simultaneously encouraging poor people to move their own money away from these necessities and toward the state’s gambling monopoly. In fact, that $70 billion in annual lottery revenues is strikingly close to what the government spends on food stamps. Is there any set of policies more contradictory than pushing lotto tickets on poor people, and then signing them up for welfare programs that make them financially dependent on the government? Politicians who profess a desire to alleviate poverty often lament how few levers they have to pull. So here’s a novel idea: Stop selling poor people a mirage of the American dream at the end of a convenience-store line.”

For what types like Bishop Woosley describe as a win-win bet sounds more like a lose-lose bet all around. For the bettor, the government, and for We the (misled) People.

There’s still a sucker born every minute and a multitude of pols ready, able and willing to take the fullest advantage of them.