The irony of the lottery and education funding: Learn ‘em better and lose players?
If “the house” could not guarantee a win in a long-run, it would never get into the gambling business. I am an educated and math-aware individual, and I firmly understand this concept. Therefore, I’ve always been highly cautious about gambling.
But imagine the irony when the government is “the house” too. They’re not getting into this gambling thing unless they can guarantee a win, and in this case, the customers from whom they are extracting are citizen. Simultaneous to administering the lottery, the government shoulders the responsibility of public education (to a greater degree even than we’d like), and in those schools I’d like to think that some basic precepts of probability are taught.
So, in nonexistent world of logic and reason weaved in this blog entry, government schools with math classes would teach children to never play the government-administered lottery based upon the principles of statistics and probability.
But people do play the lottery. Often. What does that mean? That the government is failing in its responsibility to educate (see the simple maxim above), and by way of failure it is benefiting.
Oh, and the gem of it all? The lottery funds the schools. So again, using “logic” (which seems here to be overrated), if a lottery is highly successful, it provides lots of money to public schools. In turn and in the long-run, the quality of education improves, and children grasp mathematics and probability with greater acuity. Result? The supply of lottery players dwindles.
Yet somehow, some way, we’ve still got a multibillion dollar lotto industry and dumbass kids.
Michael Heberling of the Independent Review has written an informative anti-lottery piece that’s packed with information. For example:
- The average player spends $313 a year.
- Those with incomes of less than $10,000 spend on average $597 (the most of any income group).
- Blacks spend $998 on average, whereas whites spend $210.
- Those older than sixty-five spend $475 on average, whereas those between eighteen and twenty-nine spend $152.
- Men spend $368 on average, women $254. (Clotfelter and others 1999, 31)
- High school dropouts spend twice as much as college graduates. (National Coalition 2001)
- The top 5 percent of the players account for more than half of the sales. They spend $3,800 on average. (Kelly 2000)
There’s lots more interesting stuff in the article, and I recommend at least skimming over the full text.
December 29th, 2004 at 3:10 pm
I post in true Web fashion, that ism without having skimmed the article. The lottery, like cigarette tax, is inadvertently regressive… it punishes those at the lower end of the income scale (because they are at the bottom of the education scale).
The question, of course, is that bad? (the tax/lotto… the combination of “a miltibillion (sic) dollar lotto industry and dumbass kids” obviously is)
December 29th, 2004 at 4:57 pm
Spelling error fixed. Ironical that was, amf. :)
December 29th, 2004 at 7:56 pm
The lottery and similar vices are thinning the herd. Good or bad, Darwinism takes no sides. Maybe human evolution isn’t dead afterall! It’s just really really slow…(shall we call it retarded?)
August 1st, 2005 at 8:45 pm
Before you start blaming teachers for all the problems with education, you really need to do your research. Most of us are working 50-60 hours a week for less than $25,000 a year and that is with a master’s degree. Why do we bother? It is certainly not for the money. It is because we care about those students that deserve a chance regardless of their background or socioeconomic status. The way to improve education, if that is what you really want to do, is to support those people, like teachers, who truly care about doing what is best for children.