State lottery much like illegal racket

link Rube Render

Local columnist

Wikipedia explains that the numbers game or numbers racket involved an illegal lottery played mostly in poor neighborhoods where a gambler attempts to pick three digits that will match those that will be published the following day.

As an example, the number could be the last three digits of the amount of money race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack — published in racing journals and major newspapers in New York.

The bettor could play for as little as one cent, and this ability to wager small amounts of money was considered a major attraction in poor and working class communities.

A winning number typically paid off around 600 to 1. The odds of winning the numbers game were 1,000 to 1 and this difference created enormous profits for racketeers.

In the latter decades of the 20th century, state governments discovered the numbers game, made it legal and called it the Lottery.

Powerball prizes have reached as high as $500 million.

The ostensible reason for this in New Mexico was to fund the schools. Not content with giving the sucker, I mean citizen, odds of 1,000 to 1 as the compassionate racketeers of old did, state lotteries raised the number of digits one had to pick from three to six and this increased the odds of winning to more than 175 million to 1.

Over the years they also increased the price of a lottery ticket from $1 to $2.

As soon as the politicos realized this fresh infusion of cash for education, they promptly cut the existing budgeted funding for schools so they could spend that money on other vital needs of the state like jet aircraft and executive chefs.

In the event one overcame all these impediments and actually won the lottery, they were immediately accorded the opportunity to remit income taxes to the federal and state governments.

In spite of or maybe because of this, lottery income has declined and the states are constantly examining new and more exciting ways to entice gamblers to continue playing. The Clovis News Journal reports on one of these new multistate games and explains that lottery tickets will increase to $5 and the prizes will be capped at $25 million.

Government’s answer to every revenue problem is to decrease services (prizes) and increase cost (ticket prices).

Couldn’t the state contact some old retired guys out there named Lefty, or Legs, or Bugsy willing to run the lottery for a cut of the action?

Rube Render is the Curry County Republican chairman. Contact him at:

[email protected]