Real Kato Blog: The Lottery

North Carolina has no lottery. This is a great inconvenience to the millions of North Carolinians who play the lottery each week.

I drove to South Carolina to buy some Powerball tickets yesterday. The jackpot was $212 million. The odds of winning that jackpot were 120 million to one. I didn't see it as gambling (no gambler in his right mind would bet a 120-million-to-one shot). It was just paying for the opportunity to fantasize for a while, about what I might do with that kind of money. (I always wanted to go on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", so that when Regis would ask, "If you win, what are you going to do with the money?", I could answer: "I'm gonna blow it all on hookers and cocaine.") I suppose I can fantasize for free. But it's just not the same.

Anyway, it was a nice day for a drive in the convertible.

I won nothing. Zero. Not even the $2 prize for matching just the Powerball. That's what usually happens.

The four hours of driving gave me time to think: why don't we have a lottery, despite overwhelming popular support for it, and despite the fact that North Carolina residents are pumping millions of dollars into the coffers of South Carolina and Virginia?

This is one of those weird things that has united the far-right and the far-left against the centrists. The far-right has a moral objection to gambling; the far-left has a moral objection to something that disproportionately pulls money from those who can least afford it.

The practical aspect is this, though: people are gambling anyway, so why not regulate it and use the money to good purpose? It's the same rationale for legalizing marijuana... or for that matter, the same rationale for not banning tobacco and alcohol.

One more observation: some folks object to paying an additional $50 in taxes per year, but have no problem spending $500 on lottery tickets each year. It's not logic at work here: it's emotion. Democrats, are you paying attention? When it comes to things like raising taxes, you need to find an emotional rationale for it. Logic alone doesn't work for the masses.

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