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JWeinCom on 09 April 2021
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sundin13 said:
JWeinCom said:

Yeah. The money from the lottery going towards education would be good in theory if those with more money were the ones gambling, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

To play devil's advocate though, the justification would be that if people weren't gambling with the state lottery system, they'd gamble elsewhere. Better to recapture some portion of that income than none of it. 

I'm not sure if that is true in general, but especially when it comes to the lottery. There is a lot of casual spending going into the lottery system which isn't always predicated on gambling addiction (also as a side note, it is harder to develop an addiction to something that you don't have access to). I think there are two general trends which indicate that lottery spending is not baked in spending, but instead extra spending: Advertisement and High lotteries.

If this was baked in spending, advertising wouldn't be required, yet as others have mentioned, half of the ads you hear these days are for either the lottery or some online betting service. Clearly this advertising drives use, otherwise it likely wouldn't be so prevalent. 

The second refers to the phenomena of increased spending when we see the lottery reach a particularly high value. Spending on the lottery increases, which again demonstrates that spending is based on external factors and not just an individual's desire to gamble.

This actually brings me to a regulation that I wasn't previously considering: Banning or limiting advertisement for gambling/lotteries. I certainly think we should end spending on state lottery advertisement. Thinking about it, it just doesn't make sense. The state is spending money to advertise something that is essentially a tax?A direct tax would save the advertisement money and be able to be designed in a far more progressive way. As for overall advertisement regulation, I think we should ensure that there are far more qualifications around statements regarding potential winnings.

Yeah, advertising is a huge part of my concern over this, especially with how targeted modern advertising is. The whole point of it is to target people with what would tempt them most. So, it's not just that gamblers will be able to gamble from their home, they'll also be frequently prompted to gamble. It's like if Budweiser could go into an alcoholic's house and offer them a beer.