Since you mention it: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/lotterie...

Lotteries are a symptom of the problem of poor financial education. Lottery-funded scholarships are the only way a lot of kids get to college. Ban the lottery, and their parents will blow it on something else. That something else will probably not allocate most of its funding to scholarships.

edit: If this country were rational enough for the solutions proposed in replies, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

You don't need lottery-funded scholarships if you have universal education (as most first world countries do).

> Taxing innumeracy seems a good start.

Taxing based on wealth instead of intelligence just seems more....civilized?

"The measure of a civilization is how it treats its weakest members."

"The measure of a value judgment is whether it is enclosed by quotation marks"

Old saw: if you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it.

Or, alternately, we should be funding that education by taxing companies who will ultimately be consuming those employees anyways.

>>Not unlike the lottery, which the poor regularly spent their meager pittance on. Taxation of the poor as Lincoln noted.

Not sure if you're trolling. Assuming you aren't, allow me to point out that your analogy is ridiculous. Fines are mandatory: you have to pay them or you face stiffer fines, and even jail. Lottery is completely voluntary. No one is forcing them to play.

Actually, the two are very related. While one is bound by law enforcement and the other is a "voluntary expenditure" they both accomplish the same goal, taxing those who have the least to give.

And while we are involved in a discussion of human psychology. Maybe consider the mental aspects of extreme poverty and you can see that purchasing lottery tickets is not exactly voluntary but a desperate attempt to change the course of an exasperated existence. Just a thought.

For example. Drinking water is voluntary but if you go without water you might get the feeling it's a little more than a choice...

>>Actually, the two are very related. While one is bound by law enforcement and the other is a "voluntary expenditure" they both accomplish the same goal, taxing those who have the least to give.

That's literally the only common thing between them. This doesn't make them "very related." It makes them tangentially related at best.

>>For example. Drinking water is voluntary but if you go without water you might get the feeling it's a little more than a choice...

Wow, so now you're comparing purchasing lottery tickets to drinking water. Amazing.

It'd be funny and practical if money invested in lotteries never resulted in a large win but was later returned to the participant - like a surprise investment scheme.