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The idea that people will always want to gamble explains why lottery games can’t be stopped, but that explanation doesn’t really explain why state governments decided to get in on the act. Cohen argues that the modern lottery story begins in the nineteen-sixties, when growing awareness of all the money to be made in gambling collided with a crisis in state finances. With populations rising and inflation soaring, states were finding it increasingly difficult to balance their budgets without raising taxes or cutting services. Both options were highly unpopular with voters.
States began casting around for ways to raise revenue that wouldn’t enrage their anti-tax electorates, and they turned to lotteries. Lottery opponents hailed from all walks of life and political ideology, but their most vociferous critics were devout Protestants who viewed government-sanctioned gambling as morally irresponsible. Despite such objections, the lottery quickly gained popularity.
Today, the vast majority of lottery revenues go to public services. In New York, for example, the lottery’s slogan is “Your Chance of a Lifetime to Help Education,” and since 1967 it has raised billions of dollars in that vein. But there’s a darker side to these games as well, and it’s one that Cohen reveals with eloquence and rigor. The biggest problem is that they are dangling the promise of instant riches in an age where inequality has become a fact of life and the old national promise of economic mobility has largely disappeared.