Our Wyoming neighbors have become the 44th state to establish a lottery. However, they won't be playing scratch tickets or video lottery:
...[I]n an unusual move, lawmakers banned the lucrative and popular scratch-off tickets and electronic video lottery games.
“That was the only way we could get that passed,” said state Rep. Dave Zwonitzer, a Republican who has been pushing for several years to legalize a lottery. “We’re not into scratch tickets or any kind of video lottery — anything that might be considered instant gratification,” he said [Pamela M. Prah, "States Expand Lotteries, Online Gambling," Government Technology, 2013.04.26].
Even Wyoming Republicans can tolerate a little nanny-statery to protect citizens from their own worst impulses. But that doesn't change the fact that gambling is an awfully inefficient way to fund government. Consider the 2012 numbers for state lotteries:
- Sales: $68.8 billion.
- Payouts: $42 billion.
- Profit for states: $18.7 billion.
Our state lotteries give us the worst for income redistribution, reshuffling 61% of the revenue spent at random, serving no net social good... unless you think government has some proper role in providing pallid, fleeting entertainment designed to leave most participants disappointed. In South Dakota, where 91% of lottery revenue comes from Internet gambling, we randomly redistributed 67% of lottery money in fiscal year 2012.
That's nothing but waste, and that's nothing government should promote.
If Wyoming can justify preventing its citizens from the seduction of instant gratification, all state governments should be able to protect their citizens from such inefficient and fruitless economic activity. Take state lotteries out of the economic equation, and collect and distribute revenue in a more sensible, targeted fashion.
Imagine if all the money spent on just video lottery had been spent on real goods and services, or used for personal debt reduction. How different would this state look now?
Exactly, Mike. Every economic activity redistributes wealth, but the $600 million South Dakotans spent on lottery didn't put food on the table or a new Ikea table in the kitchen.
You don't have to imagine. The temporary hold on SD Gambling was a great sociologic, and economic controlled variable test of the kind not often possible.
During the temporary hold on gambling, retail sales in clothing stores and departments increased, grocery sales increased, spousal and child abuse dropped. There were other measurable effects but I do not remember them.
Didn't school funding take a licking during that period, Mr. Wiken? I say, if 91% of our gambling is Internet gambling like it says above in Mr. H's blog then that's 91% of the gamblers sitting at home on fancy computers gambling away where they bother no one and not out in the seedy underbelly establishments that everybody was after back in those days of a ban on gambling.