Taking a Gamble

The NC lottery will officially begin its launch next week with sales of scratch-off tickets, to be followed in late spring and summer with the numbers games. This has been a long time coming. Many people have been pushing for a lottery for years, and they have finally seen their day. I understand the movement behind it - raise revenue for education, whatever - but I don't believe that a lottery is good for the overall welfare of the state. I don't believe that a lottery will solve NC's public education problems, either.

The state of North Carolina is a great place for higher education. The public schools in the UNC system are well supported by the state, and are a good value. I came to ECU for my undergraduate degree, which I was only able to do because the cost as an out-of-state student wasn't any higher than attending college in-state in New York. Unfortunately, it appears that the UNC schools have been a priority for so long, that public education for primary and secondary students has suffered. The state pays teachers such a low salary that it is beyond difficult to attract teachers from other parts of the country. This leaves the state in a position that does not allow for the type of selective hiring that will provide our students with the brightest and best teachers.

Raising money to supplement education is an honorable proposal. I doubt that anyone spending their $1 (or more) has that in mind, though. Who wouldn't want to invest such a relatively small sum if there is a chance of winning millions? Well, the people who already have money of their own, that's who. Which means the people "donating" their cash to education are generally the ones who really can't afford it.

In New York I worked at a grocery store service desk for seven years, and my job included selling lottery tickets as well as distributing welfare and child support payments. Quite a few of our customers would come to the window at one end of the desk, swipe their card, type in their pin, and receive hundreds of dollars monthly in cash. This was in addition to the food stamps, of course. Now, I'm not getting on the welfare soap box here, but what often happened next gave me great distaste for the system.

Many of these customers, upon receiving their cash, would make their way to the other end of the counter and spend sometimes one hundred bucks or more on a combination of scratch offs, daily numbers, and weekly lotto games. I'm quite confident that none of them have made their millions yet. In fact, in my seven years behind that desk, none of my customers had an impressive payout.

North Carolina has rural areas with hopeless poverty. It is easy to forget that, living in one of the highest-income zip codes in old Raleigh. Hey, I get a big break on rent...I'm definitely dragging that stat down. Thinking back to the years I lived in Eastern NC, visiting Beaufort & Hyde counties...There are some hard-living people out there. I have college friends who took trips with their churches to the NC mountains to help install indoor plumbing for families who had never had any.

So, these are the people who are so despondent, and who want so badly to change their situation but can't figure out how to do it on their own, these are the people who will get hooked. They'll be afraid to miss a drawing, because each week could be their big chance. Even if they are struggling to make ends meet they will find their lotto money somewhere. Just like they find their beer money, or worse. It will become another unfortunate addiction plaguing the "have nots." I hope it's worthwhile.