Comedian John Oliver dismantled the feel-good message of state lotteries on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” to reveal that there’s nothing behind their products but a bunch of BS.
Americans spent $68 billion playing the lottery last year, which the HBO host pointed out is more than they spent on movie tickets, music, porn, the NFL, Major League Baseball and video games put together.
“Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they did on America,” Oliver said.
State lotteries generate so much business because, as Oliver put it, they’re selling “hope.” Attractive advertisements tell lottery ticket buyers that the money they’re blowing will go to schoolchildren and, if they are the lucky one in 176,000,000 that actually hits the jackpot, they can then use that prize money to start a college fund for their children and grandchildren.
But Oliver revealed that even the lottery’s ostensible purpose, to generate revenue for education, is a big inflated lie — the lottery provided no additional funding for education in 21 out of the 24 states that dedicate those funds.
“As math students in one of those states would put it: ‘That is nearly 50 percent!'” Oliver said.
Watch below:
But money spent on state lotteries circulates. People buy tickets, the money goes into the lottery, some of it goes to pay winners (and a cut for the store they bought it in), money goes to expenses like paying salaries to lottery employees, some goes to schools or whatever worthy cause the state uses to attract customers and obscure the fact that it’s scamming those customers. The money is used!
But tax money…oh, yeah, tax money gets used in pretty much the same way, except that instead of a few big winners, all the people win when government protects them from fires and crime and scam artists (except the lottery), paves roads, keeps up bridges and builds new ones…
The expected payback is terrible … like 50%. Roulette in Vegas is more like 95%.
Visit any part of Atlantic City that isn’t actually a casino property and then tell me about the broad social benefits of legalized gambling.
Somebody once said that state lotteries are taxes on stupidity, and while it’s a bit mean-spirited it’s fundamentally correct.
I’m shocked to see that the lottery provides no funds for education in most states. And of course, even if it did provide funds for education, it’s not “extra money”, the state funding for education through property and income taxes would decline.
My biggest problem with the lottery, though, is that the states are explicitly encouraging, with multi-million dollar ad campaigns, to do something that is harmful. There are other issues where there is perhaps some nuance, but there can be no question that people in poverty playing the lottery is just wrong.
Kudos to Oliver for doing such a thorough piece on lotteries.
They are bad on just about every level…but between folks’
gambling addictions and the little lottery money that does
trickle in, don’t expect reform any time soon…