Posted on 08/17/2008 4:14:53 PM PDT by SmithL
On Oct. 3, 1985, you could have stood in a long line outside a liquor store a few blocks from the Capitol for a chance to buy a small piece of cardboard and win a big sum of money.
Today, you can do the same thing – only with no line.
That, in 50 words, is the story of the California Lottery – a 23-year-old anachronism that is among the worst performing of the country's 42 state lotteries.
While many other states' lotteries set sales records in the fiscal year that ended June 30, California lottery officials announced that revenues for the Golden State's games would be $275 million lower than the previous year.
The slump comes at an inauspicious time for California. Desperate for new revenue sources that aren't direct tax increases, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for leveraging future lottery revenues into current cash to help plug the state's gaping budget hole.
After first suggesting the lottery could be leased to a private operator, the governor proposed selling bonds that would be secured by revenues from the games, which would be upgraded and improved to produce roughly twice as much revenue as they currently do.
"It's an asset that is underperforming," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger observed in mid-May when announcing his bond sales proposal. " … Our lottery does not perform at 100 percent … . We're making $3 billion on our lottery. We could make $6 (billion) or $7 billion on our lottery. Other states make that amount of money."
That California's lottery is, relatively speaking, a weak sister among U.S. lotteries, is undeniable. Compared to the other nine most populous states, in fact, California's lottery is dead last in per capita sales, per capita advertising, retailer representation and prize payout.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Please try again
This is the tale of any lottery. Optimism from the guvmint money-grubbers about how much it’s gonna help, and then years down the road it is a nothing.
Maybe there is hope for this country after all!
It’s been a while since I had stat. How can the odds of winning be the same when you have 100 or 1 chance? I must have missed that day.
I’m a big advocate of the lottery and anything else nonconfiscatory the government wants to do to raise money. Bake sales, car wash whatever. If you don’t like the lottery, they don’t send SWAT to force you to buy tickets.
I understand your point of view. But, government shouldn’t be in the gambling business. Leave that to the gamblers....er....wait a minute. Did I just say that?
I would not object to a privately run lottery with trax going to the state. Probably more efficient and less state expense.
“This is the tale of any lottery.”
Well, the lottery is a canary-in-a-coal-mine for the taxing authorities. If a lottery is making money, then government has allowed taxes to be too low to the point where people will waste their money on a lotto ticket. Ya gotta think like a bureaucrat.
The California lottery should buy up foreclosed houses and offer those as winnings.
If there is one thing state-run lotteries have gotten right, it is security. It is damn near impossible for someone to cheat the lottery.
Imagine if the process of voting was as secure as the lottery.
Isn’t the lottery a “poor people” tax? Same as the cigarette tax?
Thats what an economics instructor told me once, and I never forgot it.
How would the dems get elected? LOL!
It has to do with the odds of winning being so astronomically low to begin with. Even multiplying it by 100, assuming you don't get any repeat number sequences, doesn't raise those odds by very much.
It's an asset that is mismanaged, just like most every other part of our Sacramento bureacracy. Just fire the whole bunch of them.
so how many do I have to buy before it doesn’t equal 1 chance?
Around here, they kept making it harder to win, and each time they did, ticket sales slumped. They finally backed up a little, and sales recovered slightly.
so when do I win the lottery?
Just buy one ticket for any particular drawing. It literally has to be the luck of the draw that makes you win.
All state run lotteries are structured so that even if you bought every possible combination of ticket, you will not get that money back. In the Maryland lottery for example, only half of the money collected actually goes to pay for the prizes. Of course anyone who wins the jackpot is taxed so they lose 1/2 to 2/3 of the cash right there and then. I would say the state makes about 5/6 of each dollar spent as profit under this regime.
Too few winners. The odds are so stacked against winning that people just quit playing. I’m not much of a gambler, so I don’t play the lotto. I save the money I don’t spend on lotto and go to Vegas. Better odds.
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