The New York Lottery is a state-operated lottery founded in 1967 with the slogan “Your Chance of a Lifetime to Help Education.” This NY lotto game generates over $3 billion a year in revenue earmarked for educational purposes. The lottery offers various games such as Powerball, Mega Millions, New York Draw, Take 5, and Win 4 Midday and Evening. Find the latest lottery results online including the jackpot winning numbers for each draw.
During the late-twentieth century, when America was in the midst of a tax revolt that began with California’s Proposition 13, state legislators began to embrace the lottery as a way to raise revenue without raising taxes or alienating voters. As Cohen explains, lotteries provided state coffers with a seemingly magical “budgetary miracle” that allowed politicians to maintain existing services without fear of voter punishment.
In addition, supporters of the lottery claimed that people were going to gamble anyway, so why not let the government pocket the profits? This argument, as Cohen points out, lacked any ethical grounding—by its logic governments should also sell heroin—but it gave moral cover to those who approved of gambling.
But critics of the lottery point out that a significant portion of state lotteries’ revenue comes from poor people, who end up paying for the dreams of others. They also argue that the regressive nature of state lotteries, their role in fostering gambling addictions, and the way they discourage normal taxation contribute to growing income inequality and undermine the long-standing national promise that hard work would make Americans richer than their parents.
