The Spotted Ball, A True Story by Larry Cohen c. 2025
Chapter 20 “100, 1000, or 10,000 tickets”
Since I do not want my readers, especially those who have just finished reading the last chapter of my true story, to conclude that I am completely opposed to all government-sponsored lotteries. I am not. However, we can readily see how the promise by New York State that its revenues from the state lottery and related games of chance would be dedicated to fund education ended years ago. Now, the profits go directly into the State’s General Fund. In the absence of outright corruption, however, I had no intention of maligning all lotteries. Albeit, in the past, many have been plagued by and with corruption of one sort or another.
A colleague of mine once said, “If you win the lottery, that’s when your troubles begin.” When one looks at the evidence closely, he was right to some degree. When he made this remark over a decade ago, there were six Illinois State Lottery winners, winners of large payouts, who kept on being paid by the State of Illinois, only not as much and in a different way. They were all incarcerated in the Illinois State Prison. The number is probably more than six by now, but it does prove his point.
Yet, on the other side of the same coin is what another friend said to me when a Florida resident won his state’s Lottery. Said my Floridian friend, “Sudden wealth only amplifies the qualities one already has.” He went on, “If you are a nice guy, it makes you a nicer guy…if you are a jerk, it makes you a bigger jerk.” I often think of his remark.
At a fraternal dinner, I met another gentleman, a mathematician, with whom I conversed about our state lottery since the grand prize was large enough to make that evening’s news. He was working for the federal government at the time under contract for the military at our regional U.S. Air Force base, a base that has since been shuttered. He argued that betting in a lottery that has a very large payout was really a good bet when one considers the small amount wagered against the prize offered. I claimed that it was not a good bet since having 100, 1000, or even 10,000 tickets did not appreciably change the odds of winning. He countered that most winners only win with one ticket. Perhaps he was right.
In summary, I would say that I am not for nor against state-sponsored lotteries. What these lotteries really tell me is that, as a society, we permit a few persons to be removed from the workforce in order to raise government revenues. I say this because we have read in press accounts that winners of large payment prizes often claim that “they will keep on working.” Yet, when investigative reporters tracked down these winners, to a one, they all had left their work-a-day life within 2 months of their win, with most leaving sooner.
One last note on lotteries as a form of gambling. A real, hardened, and true gambler would not even think of investing one dollar in a lottery. A gambler, like an alcoholic, has his preferred drug. As rum is to rummies and wine is to wino’s, gamblers stick to the game they know, despite the undeniable fact that loss is inevitable. Lotteries, however, by and large, attract the so-called “recreational” gambler, as well as attracting governments that like to think of it as a harmless way to raise revenues. I am sure that there is much more to expose about state-run lotteries, but at this point, I’ll leave that up to the investigative reporters.
To be continued….