The Water Cooler

I put down $10 on it yesterday. Should be interesting.

In Georgia, that's $318M AFTER taxes with lump-sum option.

Can u buy them online or over the phone? Or do u have to buy in person?

In person, cash money

Was on vacation in Gatlinburg and heard it was over 500 mill. Had to stop on way home yesterday and get $20 worth. First time to buy lottery tickets, hoping for beginner's luck.

Pretty depressing also to think about how money is leaving Alabama to go across the borders to buy tickets in other states...

Interesting article by cbs news on where the money really goes. Very little to education
60% to winner and 9 of 10 blow thru winnings in 5 years.
25% tp sellers. 15% to stateswho use for various general services.
IRS will get $100 million . Impact on education is surprisingly small.

Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. I'm proud alabama hasn't caved in to what other states are doing here. Its one of the things that makes me want to move back one day.

CRAP

If prostitution was legal it would be no different, people that want it get it now. I don't see how gay marriage would increase the tax rolls but ok... I doubt gays would move to Alabama but trust me there are plenty around now.

All that would be the same as it is but the cash that went to Georgia (where I live and my daughter attends UGA on the HOPE Scholarship) would be in Alabama in some form. Not to mention the $$$ that was spent in Georgia when people bought gas, snacks, a meal as I am sure many did.

No matter your views, cash walked to Georgia yesterday, my daughter is getting a tuition free college education and (some) Alabama people are proud. Not having the lottery doesn't stop it, it just means Alabama doesn't benefit from it.

What’s wrong with a lottery that will help fund scholarships for college students? Shouldn’t we support education every way possible? What’s wrong with a state lottery is the state robs from the poor through the most regressive tax possible. And while we should support education, sending kids to college with money that should be buying groceries for poor families makes no sense and is an act of cruelty on some of the most vulnerable in our society. For every winner, there were millions of lottery losers. The biggest losers will be the poor who get hooked. It's the poor and less educated who get hurt the most. Because the astronomical odds of winning the lottery don’t seem any worse to them than the odds they face every day, they spend the rent money, the utility money, the bread money for one chance in almost a billion to get out of the their desperate situation. Dave Ramsey, one of my favorites, said: “People play the lottery with money they otherwise would have spent with the small business owners who run the furniture stores, the markets, the show stores, the restaurants and so on. The lottery is a direct competitor with small businesses for people’s discretionary income. Worse yet, it is run by the state, and that puts the government in competition with small business. That’s just wrong.” The government should not put itself in a place where it is preying on people’s weaknesses. Yes, it is a choice, but the slick advertising done by the government entices people to play and actually think they have a chance to win. The Lottery causes a person to think he or she can get rich quick without having to earn the wealth by working. As a Christian, a state lottery bothers me because attaining wealth by enticing someone to gain money at the certain loss of another violates basic principles taught in the Bible. The lottery promotes selfishness and greed and hurts people who can least afford it. I've seen estimates that more than half of some state’s lottery ticket sales come from customers whose income is near or below the recognized poverty level. For the poor, the lottery is not harmless fun. It is a desperate but vain attempt to survive. But the odds of winning are so cruel—roughly 640 million to one is odds is nothing other than theft by consent.

It does not surprise me that agnostic Mencken would be quoted here, but he is not a friend of the south anyway. As I recall he said the South was "almost as sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally, as the Sahara Desert." I'd prefer to quote someone with more authority, "love your neighbor as you love yourself".

We legislate morality all the time. In fact, a sense of what is morally tolerable to our society is the foundation for most of our laws. You can't sell or possess drugs, prostitution is illegal, no stealing or murder, can't produce child pornography, no rape, no pedofilia, no late term abortion, no gay marriage, and we have tv and movie and video game ratings. Who is the government to tell us we can't do something? The community where you live makes a decision about what they can morally tolerate. Alabama has made that decision as a community.

My main argument was that the lottery displaces wealth regressively. In other words, because poor and working class citizens are particularly attracted to the lottery due to the hope of winning huge sums of money, changing their lives and climbing the economic latter, they buy more lottery tickets than the average citizen. But the chances of winning are extremely small. So the money, which is put into the lottery by families who can afford it the least, gets redistributed to families who mostly do not need financial help in the form of college scholarships. In general, poor citizens pay for middle-class and even rich citizens to go to college. Of course, over time this accentuates the income gap between poor and rich, making improvement of socio-economic status from generation to generation extremely difficult. In short, the lottery destroys the American dream by “taxing the poor” and giving to the rich.

As for the small business argument, money spent on lottery tickets have opportunity costs. This money could be used for better things. Plus any money not used by the poor to buy their essentials will be paid by others via government programs (which are funded by tax dollars). If you are so concerned with giving scholarships to kids, then give it directly to scholarship funds because only a small portion of your lottery ticket actually goes to education. Food for thought - Are you going to jump up and down in support of convenience stores if the online lottery ticket sales gains momentum?

Finally, you may take shots at evangelicals, but they do more good than most with hospitals and children's homes and feeding the poor and caring for those with substance abuse. Money given to the causes of hunger and poverty by evangelicals (and other Christian churches) is extremely high, as well as assistance to victims of hurricanes and tornadoes (Tuscaloosa for instance). When the need is greatest, evangelicals are among the first ones there to help. They truly believe it is the church's responsibility over government to help the poor. I would say that evangelicals in general do not support any form of gambling, but the lottery gets the most attention because it involves the most $.