The New York Lottery is one of the oldest state-sponsored lotteries in North America. It offers a variety of online services, including tracking lottery results and finding physical retailers throughout the state. You can also play games like Take5 and Powerball online.
When the lottery first appeared in the United States, it was promoted as a way for states to fund services without raising taxes. For legislators facing a backlash against tax increases, the lottery seemed like a “budgetary miracle,” writes Cohen: it would create millions of dollars seemingly out of nowhere, while allowing them to avoid raising sales or income taxes and still keep existing programs running.
But critics questioned the ethics of funding public services with gambling, and how much money really came from it. Some people, particularly devout Protestants, viewed gambling as a sinful vice; others simply didn’t understand how much risk was involved in playing numbers games and didn’t want to know.
Ultimately, though, the popularity of the lottery was a result of its ability to deliver a large prize with little effort. In the earliest days of the American lottery, this prize was cash; in later years, it grew to include goods and, eventually, even human beings, including a formerly enslaved man who won the South Carolina lottery and went on to foment a slave revolt. (Even Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, both of whom had serious ethical concerns about government-sponsored gambling, agreed that the lottery was less risky than slavery.)