No one seems to care where the $126.5 million dollars came from—the $126.5 “generated” by the Arkansas Lottery in 2009 that is. As if there was a money generator out behind the State Capitol spitting out twenty dollar bills day and night, Lt. Governor Bill Halter and the rest of the lottery cheering section act like it’s all free money! To hear them tell it, you’d think the $32 million they skimmed off for scholarship money was from a pot of gold at the end of some rainbow.
There’s a dirty little secret that most people already know—there is no money machine or pot of gold. Every dollar bet on the Arkansas Lottery came out of someone’s pocket—most of it from people who live on the poor side of town. Go to a convenience store and look at who is buying the tickets. Talk to the people behind the counter and they’ll tell you about people who routinely bet most of their paycheck on the lottery, and lose.
You’d think it would bother Lt. Gov. Halter, knowing that so much of these lottery dollars are coming from people who can’t afford groceries, rent, or a decent car. You’d think that it would bother the members of the Arkansas Legislature, or the folks who voted for it in the first place.
Every time they tout how much money the lottery is making they ought to be talking about how much it is taking. Imagine a headline that reads, “Arkansas Lottery Takes $126.5 Million From Arkansans” or one that reads, “Welfare Recipients Provide Millions in Lottery Scholarships; Middle and Upper-Class Kids Benefit Most;” or alongside the pictures of the jackpot winners, how about pictures of all the people who lost lots of money. Of course, there wouldn’t be enough ink to print them or enough time on the news to show them.
Then there’s all this talk about how well the lottery is running. Every time they talk about how efficiently the lottery is running, I think about the chicken plant in De Queen when I was a kid. You’d drive by the unloading docks and see all those chickens, fresh from the farm, hanging by their feet from the conveyor belt. They had no idea what was up ahead.
Efficiency and bringing in lots of money is a good thing if you’re the owner of a chicken plant or if you are running a state lottery—not so good from the point of view of us chickens.
