Powerball, Gambling, and Moral Failures
John Stonestreet and our friends at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview released an excellent commentary today highlighting the “moral deficit” involved when it comes to Powerball and state lotteries in general.
With Powerball fever sweeping the nation, Stonestreet writes,
“Now, if all that was happening was a bunch of people throwing away a couple of bucks on astronomically-long odds, it wouldn’t warrant comment. But that’s not the only thing going on here. As ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser recently said on his radio show, it’s clear that ‘the lure of easy money affects the segment of the population you wish it [that] it didn’t affect.’
“He’s referring to the disproportionate impact of state-sponsored lotteries on those who can least afford to play them: the lower-middle class and the working poor.”
Stonestreet goes on to cite statistics from John Ballor and others showing that Americans in the lower income brackets spend the most–both in terms of number of dollars and percentage of income–on lottery tickets.
Stonestreet refers to this phenomenon as a moral deficit, saying that society is essentially passing the cost of government programs along to the poor through our state lotteries.
As John Ballor wrote recently,
“All of this is taking place in a system of legalized gambling that is monopolized and promoted by those in political power. Where state governments are supposed to be looking after the welfare of their citizenry, the commonwealth of all the people, the establishment of a lottery has in fact betrayed the citizenry.
“What begins as a well-intentioned plan to provide for the needs of the people — education funding for example — very often becomes just another source of revenue for a voracious state treasury. Lotto revenue is often diverted for new purposes through legislative and bureaucratic chicanery.”
The negative effect gambling has on the poor is one reason Christians ought to oppose gambling–but it is not the only reason. Pastor John Piper recently offered seven reasons not to play the lottery, including:
- The lure of easy money has spiritual consequences.
- Gambling is poor stewardship of our resources.
- Gambling, ultimately, is a “fool’s errand.”
- It preys on the poor.
- The system requires most people to lose money.
- There are better ways to make and manage money.
- State-sanctioned gambling undermines virtue.
Of course, we have written repeatedly about the poor management and negative effects of the Arkansas Lottery. We have even analyzed, roughly, how much money we believe the average lottery player in Arkansas might be spending on lottery tickets each year. As we have said all along, when it comes to gambling, the harm outweighs the benefit, plain and simple.
You can read more about Piper’s seven points here.
You can read John Ballor’s column here.
You can read John Stonestreet’s commentary here–or listen to it below.
[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/images/content/breakpoint/audio/2016/011316_BP.mp3|titles=Powerball and the Moral Deficit]
Last Friday the Arkansas Lottery Commission 