Florida Lottery

When Roman emperors first shouted Let the games begin! they had no idea that state-sponsored games would lead to such phenomenon as our modern state lotteries. State lotteries began in the New Hampshire in the mid-1960s, as lotteries were outlawed by Congress until 1964 (Calonius 1). Since that time, lottery games have continued to win popularity among politicians, state legislatures and consumers. Inadvertently, players of state lotteries have helped turned the lottery industry into one of America's biggest growth industries "Last year 32 states and the District of Columbia sold about 20 billion tickets�or $109 worth for every man, woman, and child in lottery states" (Calonius 1).

State legislatures love lotteries because the typical profit from lottery revenues averages out to around 40 percent. However, most states promote the fact that the majority of lottery profits are earmarked for things like education, senior citizens and other worthwhile state expenditures. Florida, a state that began running its own lotteries in 1988, has experienced unprecedented success when it comes to lottery profits. After only a decade in existence, Florida lotteries helped the state set a new record high for lottery revenues generated for education "The lottery has sold more than $21 billion worth of tickets, generating a cumulative total of $8 billion in voluntary, non-tax dollars for Florida's classrooms�more than any oth

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law is very specific about specifying how lottery money is spent, for example the state mandates that 50% of revenues must be returned to players, critics argue that the state is not using the revenues generated for the purposes stated. Recently, Florida state introduced the Powerball game, a popular lottery game where the jackpot accumulates by rolling over if no one hits the winning numbers in a game. When Powerball was announced in 1998, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles stated in a televised address that the game "could increase lottery sales by $200 million a year" (Say No 1). The Florida state lottery spokesman, Ed George, argued that the game could generate "$200 million for education the first year" (Say No 1). Critics argue that such economic figures are nonsense and that Florida schools are in a deplorable condition for a state that is purportedly spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year on education generated by lottery revenues. Critics argue that Florida lottery players need to wake up and realize that if all the revenues from lotteries were being spent on education then the schools in Florida would not be in such deplorable condition. As one critic who argues that a good deal of the money being generated

Category: Economics - F