It's rational to play the lottery if you believe that it's the only way to make a significant economic change to your life.
That's a bigger problem than just education provision.
Last year the HN consensus was that daily fantasy sports betting was some sort of civil liberty.
It allowed myself and many of my peers to graduate with significantly less debt than if we had to pay for college ourselves.
My father and I once debated the merits of this, and he made a point that stuck with me: the overall funding for education didn't change. It's just that the money that used to come from the government now comes from lotteries instead.
Meaning the burden of that cost has shifted from the collected taxes, which is more proportionally paid by the rich, to the lottery system which is more proportionally paid by the poor.
I am 100% going to bring that up with the old man the next time we're allowed in the same room[0]. I think he'll like it.
[0] Covid risks...
Well sure, you're allocating the new dollars to education, then moving the old allocations over to your pet project...
My state recently made certain slot machine games legal. I found myself overlooking the parking lot of one of the casinos at 8am while waiting for my grocery pickup. The addicts were already arriving. Somehow every car seemed to have been in an accident and not been repaired. The parking lot was covered in oil stains.
When the casinos opened I imagined people going out occasionally for a fun night gambling. This was far from that.
A specific, new, fully funded program like a scholarship is actually possibly a better form of this than just general funding for the school system.
However OPs point about mostly lower socioeconomic groups funding the lottery is still relevant as it raises questions about whether this pseudo-regressive “tax” is a fair way to fund a public good like education.
It also makes the state university (UGA) much, much harder to gain admission to, since demand for a free college education is high. Applications (and thus necessary GPA/SAT scores) are through the roof... Ivy-qualified students (again, often from wealthy families) are often encouraged to go to UGA for free instead.
HOPE already vastly exceeded its budget once, leading to cutbacks and reforms about a decade ago, with many students losing scholarships or suddenly not qualifiying. A more recent report says it is likely to run out of funds again in 2028. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/new-analysis-show...
Finance professionals have access to this kind of bet outside the lottery via leverage and complex derivatives and they place bets all the time. Earlier this year Bill Ackman made 2.6B on a really wacky bet against corporate debt [0].
The lottery is absolutely a waste of money for most people, but if you're rational about it you can see it as an opportunity that has no replacement.
0: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-ackman-billionaire-made-2-...
Or maybe it's just fun to play, and people can make their own choices?
Frankly, I think governments should not be in the business of attempting to engineer "desirable" outcomes through coercion. Invest the money that would have been spent on coercion/crackdowns on education and then let people live with the consequences of their actions.
Fortunately, we can always rely on crime syndicates to provide unrestricted access to vices (either gambling, sex, booze, or drugs) for as long as people will want it, no matter what Rulers and other "pezzonovante" think of such a vices.
Said otherwise, you can not change, and will not change, human nature.
First to market isn't just luck. It's often the result of work harder and faster and taking more risk than others. It's not as if Bill Gates just sat around and told people to make software.