Rafe learns that The North Carolina lottery is a bust:
Bottom line: lotteries don’t achieve much in terms of funding schools, are a regressive form of taxation, mislead voters into thinking that schools are mostly funded by lotteries and that taxes and bond issues to fund schools aren’t needed, and contribute to gambling addiction. Who ever thought they were a good idea in the first place?
Of course, most of the issues can be traced to the fact that NC was late to the game. And not all lotteries are run the same way: some send quite a bit of money to schools (I think Georgia’s lottery was only allowed to start after that was written into the authorization). But the regressive tax thing is a killer: the people who can least afford to play are most likely to.