The lottery is a booming enterprise, with Americans spending $100 billion per year on tickets. But it has a long and sometimes rocky history, both as a state-sponsored gambling game and as a popular commercial promotion. The question, of course, is whether the lottery serves a useful public purpose — or, at least, whether it is operating at cross-purposes with other state functions.
Lotteries, a classic form of public distribution of property, can be traced back to ancient times. Biblical passages mention the giving away of land or slaves by lot; Roman emperors used lottery-like games to give away valuable goods and property during Saturnalian feasts. Lotteries were also a common part of colonial American life, providing funds to build libraries, churches, schools, canals, roads, and colleges. Benjamin Franklin ran a lottery to help finance his militia, and John Hancock held a lottery to construct Boston’s Faneuil Hall. George Washington even ran a lottery to raise money for his attempt to build a road over a mountain pass in Virginia, though the so-called Mountain Road Lottery failed to produce enough income.
Today’s state-sponsored lotteries generally operate under a legislative or constitutional charter that authorizes the sale of tickets and sets out the rules for the drawing of winners. But even in states that have a lottery, public opinion is often skeptical of its benefits. Some critics of the lottery argue that it is a poor substitute for raising taxes on the wealthy, and that the lottery promotes an unhealthy attitude toward gambling and money. Others worry about the effects of state-sponsored gambling on children, compulsive gamblers, and skeptics.
Regardless of the merits of these arguments, there is no doubt that most states have benefited from lotteries. The lottery has provided a source of revenue that allows them to expand their services without imposing heavy burdens on the middle class and working classes. And despite the objections of some people, most lottery participants are not compulsive gamblers. Most buy tickets out of a sense of civic duty and with the hope that they will win some of the prize money.
The state-run nature of the lottery is one of its greatest strengths, because it creates a monopoly for the lottery operator and limits competition from private enterprises. It also limits the risk of corruption and fraud by removing incentives for corrupt officials to divert lottery revenues from state coffers. But this same structure can create problems in other ways, including a lack of oversight and accountability.
Many lottery critics have complained that state officials are too cozy with the operators and fail to apply sufficient pressure on them to ensure integrity. These concerns are compounded by the fact that the evolution of a state lottery has occurred piecemeal and incrementally, with little or no overall policy development. Moreover, lottery officials tend to be highly dependent on their state’s gambling revenue for their own livelihoods. The result is a situation where the public interest is rarely considered as a whole, and where the lottery operates at cross-purposes with other state policies.