On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, at 04:06 AM, Peter Gutmann wrote:

Tim May writes:

...

(I bought _one_ lottery ticket, for $1, just to see how the numbers were done. Lotteries are of course a tax on the gullible and stupid.)

A friend of mine likes to say that lotteries are a tax on stupidity: The dumber you are, the more tax you have to pay.

When California was considering a lottery to 'help the schools," I voted against it. On the grounds that if something is illegal (gambling, prostitution, copyright violation, etc.), governments shouldn't be running casinos or brothels or Napster services. If governments act as bookies or slot machines, why not you and me? (And if any private gambling operation used the deceptive bookkeeping the lotteries typically use, they'd be shut down for fraud. A slot machine which paid "$10,000....(paid over 20 years, or you can have $3481.98 _immediately_!)" would be shut down by the Gambling Commission in most states.) And, practically, it led to the inner city welfare mutants and mountain hillbillies buying large numbers of lottery tickets every week. Which is of course a good thing. Except it causes them to clamor for more handouts taken at gunpoint from those of us smart enough to save our money and not buy lottery tickets. But my main objection is that it is never an assigned responsibility of government to run gambling operations. Oh, and the "our children benefit, too!" never materialized. The politicos took in the rakeoff from the deceptive odds, plus the more normal rakeoff, and spent it on their usual stuff. Which is why California is now nattering about the need for more spending for schools. --Tim May