The Lottery Essay Example

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The lottery is considered a form of gambling that can help people earn a lot of money over some time through a lucky ticket. For government-sponsored lotteries, some people support it because they assume the money accumulated is spent on critical governmental projects such as education, while others find it beneficial to government revenue through voluntary tax. However, the lottery is more complicated because the advertisements are not always correct and can easily dupe people who are not economically wise on what they gain from the lottery tickets. They keep people’s hopes high on their chances of winning and becoming dynastically wealthy, especially those surviving under $28,000 annually who are major lottery players. People should consider other means to accumulate money and divide equally or measures to ascertain winning, such as prize-linked savings where people share the accrued interest. This can serve the purpose lottery tickets are meant to serve by assuring a group of people of a good share of the money, unlike lottery winning, which is one-in-a hundred million.

According to AdvicelQ, lottery money does not support projects as expected. Even governmental funding does not directly translate to the expected value and support for specific projects or activities. It only helps raise a good amount of money for the project, yet there is no significant impact as expected of a large amount of funding. Lottery money is taxable, and with other internal taxes, the collected amount is not as much as expected to fund the project. “Government-run lotteries have a sordid and monopolistic past” explains that over the years, the money collected via lottery to fund government projects has proven to be spent as expected or support the projects to the anticipated levels because of illegal and internal-fraud activities associated with any government. In the 1800s, the government used lotteries as the primary source of funding for special projects such as the beautification of Washington, D.C (AdvicelQ, 2014). Since people do not reason like an economist, it is wise to say that even an increase in lottery profits does not improve the state education funding because they are not related or transparent means (AdvicelQ, 2014). The lottery is prone to misuse and only benefits the primary group or individuals involved in the project. Taking an example of the Virginia Lottery, it spends $26 million annually to encourage people to buy lottery tickets, with a target of $1.8 billion on lottery tickets. At the same time, individuals earn only 61 cents per dollar on top of the zero winning chances. After taxation, the 61 cents on a dollar leaves 17 cents on the dollar, yet people who are not economically smart keep on thinking the lottery is their way out of poverty to drastically wealth.

Like AdvicelQ, O’Brien argues that people should not play the lottery because it is not beneficial to the individuals as expected. Over $70 billion tax associated with lottery money belongs to the poor class, which is unfair considering their economic struggles. This converts to about $300 worth of lottery tickets for each person annually (O’Brien, 2015). A lottery is an unfair form of gambling that both the poor and the rich view as a means to a surprise and lucky wealth acquisition without thinking about the taxation associated with the gamble due to their desperation. A third of the bottom social-economic class is said to buy half of all available lottery tickets with the hope of winning a considerable sum of money. Such households make less than $28000 annually, yet they spend at least $450 annually on lottery tickets (O’Brien, 2015). Compared to the amount of taxes spent on lottery-related tax, only one-in-a hundred-million win lottery tickets. It is not the government’s fault to tax these amounts in the lottery, but since people are not concerned or careful enough of the amount of money they spend on lottery tickets.

Despite the history of lottery-related fraud and lack of enough winners, people still spend huge amounts of money on lottery tickets with the hope that they can still win and become millionaires. If people realized that buying lottery tickets is a financial mistake that is associated with high taxes and small portions of winning due to internal and external expenses or division of money, they would not require governmental regulation on lottery tickets but would have instead protested them (O’Brien, 2015). However, people, especially the poor, think that most things like the lottery haze a zero chance, and the lottery is no exception. They continue to buy lottery tickets hoping that they might win and become dynastically wealthy and overcome poverty one time. Unlike the wealthy class that buys lottery tickets for fun with no serious hope, 25% of the poor people buy lottery tickets actually to win good money (O’Brien, 2015). The government thus takes advantage of such people and preying on their dream of becoming dynastically wealthy; the poor continue to spend more money on lottery tickets with zero chance of winning.

According to AdvicelQ, even when the government abolishes the use of lottery tickets, people continue to conduct lottery illegally in different forms such as the stock market and other forms of bets, and they keep making losses. Similar to “bucket shops,” stock exchange market business and wagers are abolished (AdvicelQ, 2014). However, they are still in play illegally with no governmental control or oversee. Thus, more people keep making losses, especially the poor, who are easy targets for such unstable tactics because they desire to become wealthy through all means, especially because legitimate means have failed. The abolishment of the lottery by the government was not based on the taxation rates but on the moral argument against all forms of gambling. However, since 1964, states like New Hampshire established state-sponsored lottery among other states (AdvicelQ, 2014). Despite the convincing by politicians that such money is spent on governmental projects such as education and health, minimal amount is actually spent on the projects while other sums are spent on “dividing the pot” and other impractical expenses (O’Brien, 2015). Sate-run monopoly lotteries should be banned like any other gambling because of individuals’ moral arguments and lack of financial competence.

In conclusion, there is misleading information on statistics and uses of the lottery intending to dupe people to keep spending more money on lottery tickets without revealing the actual amount of profits people make. A government-run monopoly in the lottery is immoral because the lottery is a form of gambling that prey on people, especially the poor in economic knowledge and thirst for dynastical wealth. The poor are the majority of lottery ticket buyers because they play the lottery with the hope of winning compared to the wealthy who play for fun. People are also misled on the uses of the lottery money to fund government projects such as education, yet the accumulated amount is spent on other means, with very little in the actual project. The government should ban all forms of lottery, including state-run lotteries, or display factual details of the profits or gains an individual can make without manipulating advertisements to dupe more people to make wrong financial decisions.

References

AdviceIQ. (2014, December 3). Lotteries: A very bad bet. hometownsource.com. https://www.hometownsource.com/abc_newspapers/news/artsentertainment/lotteries-a-very-bad-bet/article_8b495311-cf0b-525e-a96e-43faf8723e25.html

O’Brien, M. (2015, May 14). Why you should never, ever play the lottery. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/14/why-you-should-never-ever-play-the-lottery/