Should Alabama have a lottery?

Why not, everyone else has one. It’s a good source of revenue and it’s voluntary.

Should? Probably. It makes money for the state. Other states nearby in the Deep South (Georgia for example) has had lotteries for 20+ years.

A lottery is one of those opt-in things – people are not forced to play; it’s a personal choice on whether to buy a ticket or not.

But Alabama is the old religious South at it worst, and the Baptists probably think that the state has no place offering gambling, because it’s evil – even though gambling is in the bible.

The end result is that if people can’t buy lottery tickets in Alabama, they drive to Florida or Georgia or Tennessee or even Mississippi.

Makes sense. But it might not make sense to a lot of people in Alabama.

I think they should, but it’s not up to me. I think neighboring state MS still doesn’t have one, but it has Tunica and Biloxi. Go figure the logic behind that.

I have mixed feelings about this. Alabama is the 4th poorest state in the US and IMO it is not serving the better interest of these poor folks there by giving them a vehicle that provides a false sense of hope to spend dollars they can ill afford to spend on a lottery that odds are they will never win a dime playing.

@Cruiser – isn’t that the nanny state syndrome – “you’re too poor and we disapprove of how you will spend your money so we won’t let you do it”

Seems like government intervention of the worst kind.

Not really, @elbanditoroso. That would be laws against gambling, period.

While I disagree with laws against victimless crimes such as gambling, drugs and prostitution, I don’t think it’s right for the state to promote those industries, either. Especially not with the tax money paid by people who are personally opposed to it.

@elbanditoroso

No, this would be the government simply not running a gambling racket. That’s not exactly the same as the government saying “you personally can’t do this”.

If anything, it’s actually the contrary. As a state lottery is simply a numbers game that the state would arrest and imprison anyone else for doing.

@Cruiser Would it help fund their public schools? I don’t know where they rank, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s near the bottom.

@JLeslie It all comes down to ‘the’ state being accountable for how it manages it’s affairs. I don’t know about you or the folks in Alabama, but in my state/county I pay a boat load of Real estate taxes and 66% of it is earmarked for education. IMHO if a state is falling prey to the allure of quick easy income from a gambling lottery effort, I have a real problem with this especially when the people who will be drawn to buy chances to change their dire situations are the ones who can least afford these tickets especially since they have already been taxed to support the very things the lottery is being drawn in to bail out. It truly comes down to these states to admit they have managed their affairs poorly and time to cut costs where needed instead of holding a golden ticket in front of the very people who did nothing to create the problems the state faces. Time for accountability not lotteries.

@Cruiser

I do believe this is one instance in which you and I find ourselves in agreement.

@Cruiser That all makes sense. Although, after having lived in the south, too many parts of the south don’t want to invest in their public school system, they will vote down taxes to pay for it if they can. Maybe the lottery helps this situation? Possibly not. I lived in TN and still there were public school problems regarding race and income and they had a lottery. Not that the north, west, pacific coast, don’t have their problems here and there with public education, but the liberals help keep it in check and outside of the south there is more of a tradition of better public schools in general.

I am pretty bothered that powerball is now a $2 ticket. Why was that price hike necessary?

They tried years ago. They talked it up and people were excited. It was promised to be modeled after the Georgia lottery where the profit would go to public education. When the bill was written, in fact, the state legislature could use the money as they saw fit. The citizens of Alabama said no. The guy who was governor at the time ended up in Federal prison. He may still be there; I don’t know.

@MollyMcGuire

And that’s pretty much how it goes. Lottery profit is pretty much always marked for education, but in truth the states draw from that money as they see fit.

@JLeslie Then the Lottery is really a slight of hand trick to get the people who bitch about paying more taxes for supporting education in their state to then take the same money they might otherwise pay in taxes to then buy lottery tickets to support the very education system they did not want to support in the first place.

@Cruiser That’s my hope.

Personally I think gambling is a god given right, like health care, drugs, and prostitution. Why should the rich be the only ones to be able to partake in this national pass time. If you can’t afford to gamble the government should subsidize you :->

@Darth_Algar No, it wasn’t nearly so sneaky; it was plain that the money was for Congress to spend as it wanted. They told us one thing and offered something completely different for the vote. Thankfully the voters were smart enough to actually read. Of course, there was a huge number of people who didn’t want the evil gambling lottery in Alabama. I’m not there anymore; it might make it now.