On the surface, that’s a really good idea. But you don’t need a lottery to gather money from a neighborhood to return money back to the neighborhood (after someone takes a cut for “administration costs”). You just need an organizer to do the job. Dare I suggest a “community organizer”?
Truth be known, the lottery isn’t the problem. It’s just a symptom of the problem. The problem is that we have taught generations of people of all races that they can get something for nothing.
At least once per semester, I ask my classes whether any of them would like to be a millionaire. I then show them how they can use the same amount of money as most Texans waste on lottery tickets and grow it into a million dollars over their projected lifespan. And I’m lucky if one student per year actually gets excited by the idea. Most aren’t willing to look that far forward.
If it’s a choice between doing people a favor without them knowing, or trying to teach them to be smarter, I will always choose the former option.
I think of lottery tickets as much like the good old days of sharecropping. Landowners would dutifully obey the law at the end of the harvest, and offer their sharecroppers a legal bank check of the full amount they were owed, typically around $200. But then they would bring out an old hat filled with shiny nickels and offer that to the sharecroppers in lieu of that dull looking piece of paper with scribbles on it.
Invariably they would choose the old hat.
Thank you for teaching!