The casting of lots for making decisions and determining fates has a long record in human history, although the practice of using lotteries to raise money is much more recent. Despite the wide public acceptance of lotteries, there is substantial opposition to state-sponsored gambling. Some of this opposition stems from the alleged regressive impact of lotteries on lower-income individuals. But the most significant criticisms come from the fact that lottery revenue is a form of taxation, and there is a strong argument to be made that relying on it for state funding should not be encouraged.
The term lottery derives from the Dutch word lotte “fate” or “luck,” and is likely a calque on Middle Dutch loterie, itself a contraction of Old Dutch lot (“fate”) or lotto, “action of drawing lots.” Throughout history, lottery games have taken many forms, but the modern state-sponsored lotteries we know today are essentially the same as those that evolved in Europe in the first half of the 16th century. By the end of the 17th century, lottery systems were in place throughout Europe, and they quickly spread to the United States, where Benjamin Franklin organized the first official public lottery in 1612 to raise funds for cannons to defend Philadelphia against the British.
Lotteries have also been widely used in colonial era America to finance road construction and other public works projects. George Washington sponsored a lottery to fund his debts, and Thomas Jefferson held a private lottery to help alleviate his crushing financial burdens. These early examples show how popular and successful lotteries can be.
During the post-World War II period, when state governments were expanding their array of social safety net programs, they looked to lotteries as a source of “painless” revenue – gamblers would voluntarily spend money on tickets while taxpayers’ overall taxes didn’t increase, and the result was a new stream of funding for the programs. This arrangement was not sustainable, and by the 1960s, a number of observers were warning that state lotteries should be abolished.
When states establish a lottery, they have broad support from many specific constituencies: convenience store operators (who often sell the tickets); vendors of equipment for conducting the lotteries; teachers (in those states where lottery revenues are earmarked for education); and state legislators, who become accustomed to the extra cash. But as with other forms of gambling, the lottery’s reliance on large numbers of small payments can obscure the regressive character of its revenues.
The key to winning the lottery is not to buy too many tickets, but to choose the right ones. Avoid selecting a group of numbers that are close together or those that end in the same digit. Instead, be bold and venture into the territory of unconventional numerical strategies. Romanian mathematician Stefan Mandel, for example, won the lottery 14 times by collaborating with investors to purchase enough tickets that covered all of the possible combinations of numbers. This approach cost him $97,000, but he still kept $1.3 million.