The Orbis

Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: Issues

Although state lotteries are currently a substantial source of much-needed funding for education, they are a fundamentally flawed way of raising these funds. If we agree at the onset that universal access to quality education is an end in which our society ought to invest, then the next logical question is: How should we fund it? Ideally, the cost of funding education should be shared broadly and with sensitivity to social inequality. Using lotteries to fund education, however, is neither a broad means of collecting funds nor a fair one. The vast majority of all lottery ticket purchases are made by the poor and working-class, so we can hardly claim lotteries are a means of funding education in which all of our society is enlisted to help support the cause. While supporting education and ensuring broad access to college should be the prerogative of any fair and just society, lotteries are an unfair, regressive and far from ideal means of collecting the much-needed revenue to fund these initiatives.

Given the problem with lotteries has to do with the way in which they collect money (i.e., disproportionately from the poor), no amount of examples demonstrating the virtue of spending public funds on education and scholarships are relevant to this discussion. If education is indeed a goal our entire community should work to nourish and support, then why should we collect the money for scholarships disproportionately from some sectors of society and not from others? Why shouldn't we expect that all of society chip in, particularly those who are well off enough to spare far more than the (mostly) poor citizens who purchase lottery tickets? Lotteries are a troubling way of avoiding the important democratic notion of social responsibility.

Nonetheless, I can imagine the reply that lotteries are a desirable means of collecting money because they rely on "free choices," rather than the more compulsory method of collecting more revenue by raising taxes. This point, however, completely overlooks the social and economic dynamics under which lottery tickets are purchased. We should hardly be surprised the wealthy are not primarily concerned with gambling for the possibility of escaping the demands of multiple low-paying jobs or the financial woes of living in poverty. Moreover, the chances of winning most lotteries are the same as being struck by a bolt of lightening; it's again unsurprising the well-off don't gamble against unbelievable odds for something they already have a good measure of: financial security.

Continued...

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