The Lottery: Taxing The Poor

The Lottery: Taxing the Poor? Being impoverished promotes desperate attempts to escape one’s situation. One of the ways those in poverty try to change their situation is through gambling, especially gambling with regard to the lottery. From scratch-offs to power balls, many of those in poverty value the likelihood of winning much higher than their immediate needs. In this paper I plan to explore parallels between the lottery system and the tax system as well as determine whether or not this system is just, according to the utilitarian theory of justice. Taxes are intrinsically mandated by the state, paid to the state, and used to benefit the state. Taxes do not necessarily benefit each individual equally. I will use this definition of the

According to a Cornell University study, areas with a lower per capita income have significantly higher participation in the lottery than areas with a higher per capita income. In Maine, for example, lottery ticket sales were 200 times higher per capita for areas with residents below the poverty line than in wealthier areas (Tripoli). Entertainment costs and education substantially account for this dramatic difference in decisions among income levels. Gambling provides a thrill for those involved and sugarcoats the reality of losing money, while advertising for the lottery focuses on how exciting it is to play (“New York Lottery”).

Those in poverty are less likely to have received higher education than wealthier citizens and therefore are more likely to be unaware of the risk involved in playing the lottery. The low price and potentially high utility pay-off of a lottery ticket is much more attractive to someone in poverty than, say, a movie ticket. It is a low entry-fee form of entertainment with addictive qualities. In this way, those in poverty are almost guaranteed to

In this way, some of the profits made from the lottery go to the state to provide public goods. To put this in perspective, many states have begun calling their lottery the “Education Lottery,” denoting the idea that the lottery is intrinsically good, while the likelihood of these profits actually going towards a specific cause is low because they are spent just like tax dollars (NCEL). In conclusion, the lottery system is clearly paralleled to taxes by the way their profits are spent. In accordance to the above observations, I conclude that the lottery is paralleled enough with taxes to be considered, in a way, to be a tax solely directed to the poor. In this regard, it is important to determine whether this tax is just or unjust. According to Mill, the utilitarian theory of justice states that any policy is just as long as it raises aggregate utility in a society (Mill 289). Since the lottery is intrinsically similar to a tax, the profits pay for public goods and, theoretically, increase aggregate utility. In accordance to the state’s perception of the lottery, the lottery is