I noticed a Daily Kos Lottery group.
Why are progressives supporting this? The Lottery is a regressive tax, raising funds primarily from working people (rich people don’t play) to fund things like education that should be paid for by more progressive tax structures (even a property tax is more progressive than the lottery). It is the Ayn Rand/Libertarian fantasy of people voluntarily funding the government instead of being taxed.
This excellent article has some great data:
In an age of rising income inequality, it’s pernicious that states rely on monetizing the desperate hope of its poorest residents. State lotteries take from the poor to spare the rich, all while marching under the banner of voluntary entertainment.
Lotteries allow states to lower corporate and other progressive taxes, and prey on the most desperate:
Local lottery ticket sales rise with poverty, but movie ticket sales do not. In other words, lotto games are not merely another form of cheap entertainment. They are also a prayer against poverty. This fits what the researchers call the “desperation hypothesis”: States are making their most hopeless citizens addicted to gambling to pay for government services.
In North Dakota, per capita lottery ticket sales are $36 a person. Almost all of those people are on the lower end of the economic ladder. It is also a tax on people bad at math, because any understanding of the actual odds involved should discourage anyone from playing. I would almost argue that being OK with blowing $20 on the lottery because you can afford it as a one-off entertainment is privilege in action — because in every sense it is the kind of financial scheme we liberals are usually against. I would argue you can’t make a big deal about Democrats getting cozy with Wall Street if you are supporting of and cozy with the Lottery because the people being enriched by this scheme are pretty much the same.
This is a serious public policy issue and I am surprised supposed progressives are actively supporting this. On a site where any impurity in a public official eliminates them from consideration by many for the White House, here are loads of people supporting about the worst modern public policy, giving aid and comfort to the Paul Ryan/Ayn Rand theories of government. Sad?
How about a solid public policy discussion in the comments section?