The lottery violates every progressive principle. Will the next governor do anything about it?

The state appears ready to carry on coercing poor people into playing a game designed to rob them of their money.

Oregon appears destined to miss its moment to end its gambling addiction. 

Earlier this month, state economists projected that Oregon's economy would put nearly $24.5 billion into state coffers, $1.5 billion more than their earlier prediction.

Legislators have been debating how best to spend these additional funds. Some great ideas have been floated but one topic has been problematically left off the table. The Democrats in control in Salem — so keen to fight inequality — have failed to consider using some of the excess funds to wean the state off of its reliance on a tax on the very poor they claim to focus on. 

Indigent community members as well as members of minority communities disproportionately play the lottery. And state lawmakers know it. They can’t google “effects of lottery” and not come across a handful of articles from well-established and deeply-trusted left-leaning outlets like Vox (here’s a sample article) ripping into the lottery for “prey[ing]” on the sorts of people meant to benefit from progressive policies. 

Knowledge of the lottery’s egregious effects has been around for a long time. Way back in 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the “widespread pestilence of lotteries . . . infests the whole whole community; it enters every dwelling; it reaches every class; it preys upon the hard earnings of the poor, and it plunders the ignorant and simple.” Stone v. Mississippi, 101 U.S. 814. 

And that knowledge is backed up by empirical evidence. Again, a simple Google search will return a slew of harrowing and convincing statistics. For instance, from Vox, “Nationwide, people who make less than $10,000 spend on average $597 on lottery tickets — about 6 percent of their income.” From researchers at Duke University: African Americans spend nearly five times more on lottery tickets than white people. From Pew: “State lotteries have a business model that’s based on getting up to 70 to 80 percent of their revenue from 10 percent of the people that use the lottery." And, from Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland: “The average return from $1 spent on lottery tickets is 52 cents.”

Despite this knowledge, the use of the lottery persists — in Oregon as well as in other progressive-leaning states. States justify the continuation of this egregious system because of the revenue it generates. They earmark funds for popular things like education and parks to further justify that not only is the lottery revenue necessary, it’s important to maintain some of the most crucial government goods and services. 

This isn’t a passive stream of revenue, however. States with lotteries spend taxpayer dollars on devising the best ways to scam poor people out of their hard earned money.

In some states, lottery departments “have become one of the largest operations run by [the government].” These departments spend millions on thinking about how to market their lottery-related offerings, how to create new, ever-more addicting games, and how to increase the revenue generated from those games. To make matters worse, these marketing efforts are often concentrated on the target consumer — poor people. 

The marketing works. Poor people tend to see lottery tickets as a form of investment, according to Arthur Brooks. They play for money, not for entertainment. They play because they think they have relatively good odds of winning, estimating that their average return is about 40% higher than it is in reality. 

The revenue justification has disappeared for Oregon because it clearly had more than enough funds. Yet, the state appears ready to carry on coercing poor people into playing a game designed to rob them of their money. 

The persistence of the lottery in states like Oregon undermines the progressiveness of the Democrats currently running these schemes. The social costs of the lottery are significant and long lasting. I can speak from personal experience.

My great grandpa squandered his pay on lottery tickets on a regular basis. That made life hard for my grandma and her siblings. To this day, she gets visibly upset whenever a Scratch-it is included in a stocking or as a “fun” gift when someone turns 18. She has seen how the lottery can destroy a bank account and a family. 

No one interested in reducing inequality can support the lottery with a straight face. It requires ignoring the obvious evidence and choosing to subject poor people to an unfair and immoral tax. 

Progressives talk a lot about the “social cost” of carbon — arguing that once you’ve factored in the negative externalities associated with carbon, the actual price of using carbon is much higher. Why not apply this concept to the lottery?

Suddenly, states would see the price of a ticket soar. When a state introduces the lotto, Kearney calculated that the poorest households shift three percent of their food expenditures and seven percent of their mortgage payments. These changes in spending undermine the other policies states cite as justification for the lottery. 

Taxpayer dollars should not support government-contrived schemes to rob poor people. That’s a fairly bipartisan position. Conservatives and progressive alike should want to safeguard American families from games that destabilize our communities. Progressives in blue states with huge coffers are in the best place to initiate the beginning of the end of the lottery. So, will the real progressive please stand up?

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Kevin Frazier helped start the Way between classes at the UC Berkeley School of Law. He grew up in Beaverton and is a proud Duck.

Photo credit: "Oregon Lottery Sign" by Beth77 is licensed under