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Icarus’ thread made me think about how the Texas legislature promised the lottery would help bail out our impoverished education system when the public voted on it about 15 years ago. What was promised never became reality:
quote: Well, the truth is lottery money is just a small piece of the education pie equaling less than 5%. The rest of the budget is paid out of the general fund which is your tax dollars.
If you state has a lottery, how does it measure up?
STORY:
If you've ever wondered where all the lottery money goes, you're not alone. News 4 WOAI (San Antonio) Trouble Shooter Jeff Coyle takes a closer look at how much of that money actually funds Texas education.
The truth is most of the money the state gets from selling lottery tickets helps fund public education. But that doesn't mean buying more tickets equals more money for the kids. Every dollar you spend on a Texas lottery ticket is divided.
Lottery breakdown
58 cents pays the lottery winners. 30 cents goes to education in Texas. 7 cents pays administrative costs. 5 cents is a commission for the retailers who sell the tickets.
Earlier this year, the Texas lottery commission celebrated all the lottery money that has helped fund public schools.
Texas Lottery Commission Executive Director Reagan Greer stated, "Texas wins. And as part of the overall state education budget, we think we're taking a positive step."
So you'd think the recent run on lotto tickets would mean even more money for the kids, right?
Well, the truth is lottery money is just a small piece of the education pie equaling less than 5%. The rest of the budget is paid out of the general fund which is your tax dollars.
If lottery revenues are higher than expected one year that just means less money the state legislature has to set aside.
During a state hearing last month, Waco democrat Jim Dunnam made it clear: more tickets do not mean more money for public schools. "When we continue to talk about lottery going to public education which it technically does, it misleads the public. It provides no new money for public education and we should be very candid about that." says Dunnam.
While lottery tickets pay for education, it’s not extra money for education and it’s certainly not going to solve the state’s school finance crisis no matter how many tickets are sold.
Posts: 1221 | Registered: Aug 2001
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When they promoted the lottery in Florida, they made a statement that was technically false at the time. They claimed that the money would go straight into education budgets. The Florida constitution (at least at that time) mandated that no collected funds could go straight into a particular budget. Instead, funds must go into the general treasury, and be disbursed from there.
Now, my understanding now is that this has somehow been changed or circumvented, and so the money does go into education, with a similar breakdown to the one you quoted for Texas. However, they essentially removed an equal amount of the funding, so that no more money comes into the education budget as a result of the lottery. Instead, the state merely gets to spend less on it.
I'm not opposed to gambling, really, but this is gambling with a terrible expected value, being pushed onto consumers as some sort of moral value ("The Florida Lottery. When you play, we all win.") when it's really a bunch of BS . . . yeah, it makes me pretty annoyed.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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It's been referred to as a tax on stupid people around here... and yes, I tax myself on occasion.
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
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You would think that most people in favor of progressive taxation would be against lotteries for the same reason, since lotteries end up effectively as a regressive tax.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Well, I kind of thought that was one of the arguements against the lottery when it first hit Indiana
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Everytime there's a gubanatorial race in Michigan the lottery always comes up, and they always tell us that it has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to our public schools, so no one ever really complians. I don't have any idea what the real figure is though.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I really enjoy the ads for the gambling boats in Indiana... "X number of jobs created" and "YY% payout!".
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Here in PA we are supposed to be getting slot machines to help fund schools. The idea is that the states cut can be used to make up for a decrease in property taxes.
The Pennsylvania plan: shift taxes from the property owers to the stupid.!Posts: 1458 | Registered: Feb 2001
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I've always been a fan of the bumper sticker, "Using the lottery to fund education is a conflict of interest."
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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It's voluntary, but it is still regressive, since people who are poorer tend to buy more lotto tickets.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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luthe, that would be an improvement for the consumer, since slot machines have a substantially higher expected value than any lottery. (Of course, this means that they would bring in less money for education, but since it seems that legalized gambling money doesn't really make a dent in education anyway, I personally would rather use it as a phony excuse to legalize casinos or jai-alai, where I get more for my money, than as a phony excuse to create a lottery, where virtually nobody comes out ahead. (Except the state, of course.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Everytime there's a gubanatorial race in Michigan the lottery always comes up, and they always tell us that it has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to our public schools, so no one ever really complians. I don't have any idea what the real figure is though.
I think you'd need to determine whether any money that would have originally been budgeted for education is now being diverted elsewhere. As Icarus said, that's what happened in Florida. Although significant amounts of money did start coming in from the lottery, the education budget didn't really change much.
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