Shannon Rush
Instructor Moseley
English 101, Section 107
2nd December 2014
The Overrated State Lottery
The state lottery has become very popular within the last century of time. It has become overrated and causing more harm than good to this society. The state lottery has certainly created pathological gamblers who plays the lottery too much. In hope to benefit the schools of education sounds good, but clearly its becoming more complicated and seeing no school improvements has doubled. State lottery should be banned from all states because it creates poverty, ruin families, and it becomes an addicted habit that can manipulate lives.
The state lottery is a game that generally promotes prizes and winnings that people gains a habit to playing. Portion of the profit from the state lottery is surpassingly benefiting to the schools for better education and the remaining is making the government richer. The state lottery is very popular and is considered to be a legal way to gamble without being penalized. How can the government create these games that enforces gambling but bans private casinos owners from the sport? This country which is ruled by government are showing just how corrupted their system is.
The lottery is causing so much misleading problems in this country and it must stop. Somebody needs to open up their eyes an see the massive destruction it has created since century. The poor communities have become victims to gambling and is depriving into more debt, it’s getting beyond controllable. The poor and low income area which are mostly African Americans seems to have the highest rate of playing the lottery than any other race. It seems that it’s a delusional mind game of thinking you are becoming a winner for large wealthy amount of money and you never win. It sets people up for failure. Why would the government put lottery tickets in poverty areas and expect a better economy? This only create more homeless people, higher rate of food stamps receivers, and government assistance (Nelson). According to THE NASPL in “Lotteries History”, “One of the most common criticisms leveled against state lotteries is that they unfairly burden the poor that they are funded mostly by low-income people who buy tickets, but benefit mostly higher-income people” (Doak). It’s not about the ethic race of color in which who plays the lottery more but it’s about the poor communities that dwells on playing to have a better life. Living in the south you see more diversity of people playing the lottery than just one race, but in other viewers eyes African American are known to play the lottery more than any other race. The government will easily say whoever buy the tickets, but on most cases it clearly seems that the heaviest players are poor and desperate for winning. These lottery players are looking for a way to have a better life. People who are well established and wealthy doesn’t play as heavily as someone that is not so wealthy (Doak). Based on Michael Nelson who wrote an article about gambling made some clearable points that poor people spend a larger proportion of their income than wealthy people on any item having a fixed price and general appeal. Poor people pay proportionately more for food, medicine, clothing, utilities, insurance, and housing, as well as for payroll and sales taxes. People who are well-off, on the other hand, spend a higher percentage of their income on things that the poor cannot afford, such as overseas vacations or season tickets to cultural or sporting events. The rich also invest and gamble in stock and commodity markets—also activities the poor cannot afford” (Nelson). It is not about large amount of money being spent on lottery ticket but furthermore the addiction that comes with the playing habits. These habits are no different from any other habits that happened with cigarettes, sports shoes, and other materialistic things.
In “The Poor Play More”, “Leah Samuel finds that average lottery sales per
