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That won't address compulsive gamblers and therefore won't address the problems identified in a material way.

As someone who worked in a very popular convenience store north of the University of Texas campus for four years during college, I watched them gamble obscene amounts while obviously living in poverty. I believe the compulsive gamblers will still be driven to gamble away as much of their available cash as they possibly can.

(I didn't downvote you)

Banning other lotteries should make it much harder for those people to get hooked in the first place, shouldn't it?

I believe they'll still find a way, as the article describes. There will be an unmet need and potential market that will be satisfied, outside the bounds of what's lawful.

Lotteries were originally run by organized crime. Legalizing state run lotteries was essentially the cure for that.

There are ways to make Lotteries fair, even without it being state sponsored.

For example, the old Numbers[0] games often used public, hard to influence sources.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdIzYtnKDII

You think lotteries are only 100 years old?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery#Early_United_States_16...

>Lotteries in colonial America played a significant part in the financing of both private and public ventures. It has been recorded that more than 200 lotteries were sanctioned between 1744 and 1776, and played a major role in financing roads, libraries, churches, colleges, canals, bridges, etc.[5] In the 1740s, the foundation of Princeton and Columbia Universities was financed by lotteries, as was the University of Pennsylvania by the Academy Lottery in 1755.

> Lotteries were originally run by organized crime.

In BC, they still are.

“B.C. disbanded RCMP unit after report warned possible crime figure bought stake in casino”

https://globalnews.ca/news/6403415/organized-crime-bc-casino...

“BC Lottery Corp. didn’t block mysterious casino cash due to ‘hundreds of millions’ in estimated losses: inquiry”

https://globalnews.ca/news/7607782/bc-lottery-corporation-my...

“Lottery corporation was aware of suspicious cash at B.C. casinos, former VP says”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ex-lottery-v...

“B.C. lottery CEO 'blown away' by organized crime threat”

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-lottery-ceo-blown-away-by-organize...

Our previous government was literally criminal. An excellent investigative journalist wrote a book about it. Well worth becoming aware of what went on.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57427971-wilful-blindnes...

One of the big reasons state lotteries got enacted was to make it much harder for illegal gambling dens to operate.

If there were legal means to gamble, people would choose that - so the theory goes. Harm reduction of sorts was the major selling point in my state when I was a kid.

Gambling in general was much more broadly illegal back when the first state lotteries were established. Nowadays, there are many legal ways to gamble in the US.

Is congress even given the power to ban lotteries? Tenth amendment gives all power not delegated to congress to the states. Unless lottery is interstate commerce it's not delegated to congress.

Unless you have a plan to undo Wickard v. Filburn, yes they have the authority.

Wickard actually had to do with interstate commerce though. Filburn's actions could reasonably cause interstate grain prices to go down. What's interstate about a state run lottery?

Moving money between people has just as much effect on interstate commerce as growing your own grain for personal use.

I'm not proposing to ban the lotteries at a federal level. If states want to try to enforce bans on private lotteries, then let them try. My objection is to for-profit state-run lotteries that exploit gambling addicts. We can have a general discussion about gambling addiction if you like, but even if it's legal the state doesn't need to actively make the problem worse.

What is your evidence, beyond an apriori argument, that this would lead to something helpful?

Why should I be compelled by the state to give my money to something that isn't clearly helpful to society?

As I mention in my comment, there's no problem with letting people opt out.

Is this something akin to that checkbox on your tax return indicating you want to donate $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign fund? I think the main difference is that it would be an extra amount you'd pay, rather than having the government allocate that $3 from the total amount that was going to the treasury.

https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/understand...

Except the PEC goes to political candidates and this money would materially help someone each year. Every person in the country could use the PEC and candidates would still need to court donations from PACs and other groups. $300k to a set number of families? We could write articles about them each year to see how this changed their lives. Even if the recipients are already wealthy it would turn into an interesting story.

Under what argument should it be reasonable to force people to play the lottery and pay $1/week for it?

I don't play the lottery, feel it's stupid and just a tax on impossibly optimistic people (or those good at math), and would be quite annoyed at having to play this lottery and pay money for it.

The point is to offset the loss in tax revenue. Very few people will notice a $52 increase in taxes, and you can set an income minimum for it if you prefer (scaling up the amount as needed to hit the revenue target).

> Under what argument should it be reasonable

To narrow the gap luck currently plays in life outcomes.

Currently, you are either born lucky, trust funds and generational real estate, or not.

More chances to be "lucky" would enable more opportunities for more people. And the OP suggests a negligible cost to make that happen.

It seems like this would do the opposite. It simply increases the role that luck plays in life outcomes.

If you take luck to be bad, this is not an improvement.

If you disagree, Why don't we just increase the number of people born with trust funds and generational wealth, at the cost to the rest of society.

This would have much the same effect as instituting the lottery.

Being lucky and winning a lottery is just as "unfair" as being lucky and being born to the right household.

Everything you describe seems to be increasing the role that luck plays, by giving 52 more chances per year to be lucky enough to win a helpful amount [but not trust fund/generational real estate level] of money.

GP didn’t say decreasing the role that luck plays, they said decreasing the gap in outcomes luck causes.

More chances to be lucky can reduce a gap that today is mostly determined by the wealth you’re born into.

Which gap in outcome is more important/influential: the gap in outcome between Jeff Bezos and you or between you and the neighbors you've lived near all your life?

Bezos could have 10x or 10% of what he has now and it wouldn't change my life at all.

The gap between me and many of my friends/neighbors today, is more important to me. I recognize how lucky I am to be born into relative privilege, but I’m not quite sure what Jeff Bezos has to do with this discussion, or what point you’re trying to make?

Because this lottery is, by intentional design, increasing the gap in outcome due to luck that's actually relevant to the typical American's life (the one amongst neighbors and friends).

Every week, thousands of people will have their neighbors and friends suddenly complaining about having to pay $100K in taxes and planning to move out of the neighborhood.

Seems like to would be worsening the divide and equality, not bringing it closer together.

Which society has less equality? one with one randomly 1 rich and 99 poor, or one with 10 randomly 10 rich and 90 even poorer.

As I mention in my comment, it's fine to let people opt out if they don't want to play.

Interesting proposal. However, will it stop the compulsive gamblers? Maybe they'll just find somewhere else to gamble. This already happens in countries where gambling is illegal like China.

This reminds me of the No-Lose Lottery concept by Freakonomics as well: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-america-ready-for-a-no-l...

I'm not suggesting to make lotteries illegal at the federal level, only to abolish the for-profit lotteries run by the states.

Just over 57% of US households are already paying zero or negative federal income tax. This scheme amounts to a giveaway of an extra sum to them, rather than an increase in taxes to them (except for the tiny sliver who are between $0 and -$52 per adult per year in federal income taxes).

True... up to a point. I'm not a fan of the parent so this isn't a defense of the idea but saying "income taxes" is a bit of a cheat. Taxes are taxes. So, what percent of of households pay taxes? If you look at not just income but sales taxes, sin taxes,payroll taxes and pass-through taxes I'd bet the answer is 100% or close to it. And it's probably more then $1 a week.

That said, the idea of adding an optional poll tax lottery seems dopey.

Dopey or not, the question I'm attempting to raise is whether it has desirable properties compared to our current state-run lotteries. In a just world, perhaps this wouldn't be necessary. But I don't know how to make the world a just one, sadly.

Correct, most of the US does not make enough money to need to pay taxes. This proposal would actually decrease that number, because receiving $300k in one year (if we tax it as income) means you will need to contribute taxes that year...maybe they can even use part of their net earnings to contribute $60 to the fund, so someone else will have enough money to pay taxes the following year.

One positive aspect of this is that, assuming we taxed these payments as income, it would reduce the deficit by around $2.5B/yr, or around 0.1% of the deficit.

Payroll tax currently caps at $147k, if we remove that limit it would reduce that deficit even further. This theoretical giveaway policy is a drop in the bucket compared to many other tax policies that exist right now.

Could make it a payroll tax which everyone with a job pays.

Seems not-downvoted to me.

I like the idea of more winners rather than more money for fewer winners.

I don't like the national aspect. Nobody should be obligated to play.

As I mention in the comment, it's fine to let people opt out. And you don't need to tell anybody that you opted out, so you can still participate in the spectacle even if your chance of winning is now literally 0% (as opposed to "vanishingly close to 0%").

This is just inequality-increasing wealth redistribution, the opposite of taxes, that does nothing to prevent compulsive gamblers from still playing shady criminal underground gambling.

You're taking a bit from the poorest, responsible non-gamblers, and enriching just a few who will mostly irresponsibly spend it into smithereens.

It's less inequality-increasing than the current Powerball lottery.

I don't see how. Currently, it's optional for everyone. You would be mandatory increasing inequality for 99.9% of people, as opposed to what, the current 5% of lotto ticket buyers?

most people are happy to pay $1 for a remote chance of winning $300,000

The wealthy class is of course happy to pay a small amount in lotto lobbying to ward off larger proportional tax increases to fund infrastructure. Hence we are stuck with lotto 4 times a week.

Do you have evidence for that?

I would have expected the lottery to pay for its own pushing.

1) Don't force me into a scheme that I don't want to participate in. Maybe "most people" are willing to gamble a small amount of their hard-earned income. I am not. I choose not to buy lottery tickets because such systems do not appeal to me and I have better things to spend $52 on. Like buying a pair of shoes for my child for the school year.

2) Your math doesn't account for the administration costs of such a system.

3) Not to get us into a libertarian "taxes are theft" debate, but if we can agree on the necessity of government services and the funding thereof, then I don't see why it should be controversial to try and find optional alternatives to taxation whenever possible. Lotteries might have their drawbacks, and we can debate whether lotteries are a good way to go about getting funding, but at least they are an opt-in / voluntary way to raise funding for those services. No one has gone to jail or had their assets seized for failing to buy a lottery ticket.

> Don't force me into a scheme that I don't want to participate in.

As I've typed four times so far, my comment mentions that there's no problem letting people opt out.

Every initiative is just "another $1 a week". You add a few thousand of those taxes and pretty soon it's real money.

If we add enough $1 a week, everyone can win the lottery every week.

Every week there's a $100 dollar lottery that everyone wins! Everyone is forced to play. Tickets are $100 each. Buy as many tickets as you like.

I think you don’t quite understand why people participate in lotteries and gamble. Lottery scratch off tickets are especially popular because of the possibility of many plays in a short period with intermittent rewards.

Also, in your scheme participating in the nation lottery is compulsory? That doesn’t sit well with me

To reiterate my comment, participation does not need to be compulsory for this scheme to work.

That's essentially what lottery/prize/premium bonds are, albeit they're optional

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_bond

Believe it or not, some people honestly have moral scruples against gambling.

Sine those scruples don't really hurt anyone else, forcing them to violate those scruples is just mean.

Nobody is being forced to participate. As I mention, you can let people opt out. I wonder if anyone is reading my comment at all?

Lotteries already have a 50% participation rate. You’re describing the status quo with more coercion—states are forced not to run lotteries.

> Nobody is being forced to participate.

The $52/year tax is forcing people to participate.

> most people are happy to pay $1 for a remote chance of winning $300,000

Sure, as a novelty. Not hundreds of times every few years.

...have every *willing US adult pay...

I'm curious why this was downvoted myself, I actually like the idea.

Compulsory enrolment in a lottery? This isn't remotely legal. Also I view lotteries as taxes on those that don't understand probability and money investing.

The government can tax you. The government can give out money to random people. What do you mean not legal? Especially because the government writes the laws...

So just change the words and suddenly it looks like all the other taxation theft they are already doing. Got it.

Oh if you think taxes in general are illegal, go for it, but you should state that upfront instead of making it sound like you think this one is special.