The casting of lots for decisions and fates has a long record in human history, including several instances in the Bible. More recently, the lottery has been used to raise money for a variety of purposes, from municipal repairs in Rome to giving away slaves and land in England. In the United States, lotteries first gained popularity in the colonial era when they were used to fund churches, colleges, and even canals. Benjamin Franklin once sponsored a lottery to raise money for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British.
State-run lotteries have become a fixture of American life, with a large majority of Americans playing at least once during their lives. But how do these state games work? In a nutshell, they are simple: people purchase tickets in the hope of winning big prizes. The amount of the prizes depends on how many tickets are sold and how much is spent to promote them. In general, profits for the lottery promoter and taxes or other revenue are deducted from the total prize pool, leaving the remaining value of the prizes for winners. The simplest lotteries are what the public thinks of as traditional raffles, in which participants purchase tickets for a drawing that may take place weeks or months in the future.
More innovative lotteries are often based on video or computer games, and they can offer much larger prizes with a shorter time frame. These are often marketed as socially responsible alternatives to gambling because they provide benefits to the community that gambling does not. These types of lotteries tend to have lower ticket prices and are popular among people who do not consider themselves gamblers.
The lottery business is booming, with revenues increasing steadily since 1964. It is no wonder that the lottery industry has resisted calls for more rigorous oversight. While promoting the benefits of their games, lottery operators have also taken advantage of the psychology of addiction to keep players coming back. These strategies are not that different from what tobacco companies and video-game makers do to keep their products profitable.
Cohen observes that the lottery’s rise coincided with a decline in economic security for most Americans. The gap between rich and poor widened, pensions disappeared, unemployment rose, health-care costs soared, and the promise that hard work would enable one generation to be better off than the last became an elusive dream. The lottery’s obsession with unimaginable wealth was a symptom of these problems, and it was not a cure.
In the late nineteen-seventies, as tax revolts intensified nationwide, state-run lotteries were promoted as a painless alternative to higher taxes. Instead of advocating that the lottery would float nearly every line item in a state budget, advocates began to argue that it could raise enough to pay for a single service that everyone agreed was important-most commonly education but sometimes elder care, public parks, or aid for veterans. This approach made the case for a lottery more compelling to voters because it was clear that a vote for the lottery was not a vote for gambling but a vote for education, or, for example, veteran support.