{"id":27922,"date":"2019-03-27T20:25:19","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T01:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=27922"},"modified":"2019-03-27T20:25:19","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T01:25:19","slug":"briefly-state-lotteries-are-hypocritical-and-exploitive-shams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=27922","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: State lotteries are hypocritical and exploitive shams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It disgusts me that state governments steal so much money from people \u2014 mostly those who can\u2019t afford the loss \u2014 by dangling before them the promise of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/powerball-drawing-winning-numbers-750million-jackpot-live-updates-2019-03-27\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">$750 million in the Powerball lottery<\/a>. A lottery is nothing but a tax on those who don\u2019t understand probability statistics. If private parties want to operate gambling systems and if ignorant individuals want to throw their money at them, it\u2019s not my business to stop them. But I\u2019m disgusted that governments piously pretend it\u2019s shameful and exploitive for private interests to run lotteries, but it\u2019s fine and dandy as long as the coercive monopoly called the state gets the profit instead. This is wrong on many levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It disgusts me that state governments steal so much money from people \u2014 mostly those who can\u2019t afford the loss \u2014 by dangling before them the promise of $750 million in the Powerball lottery. A lottery is nothing but a tax on those who don\u2019t understand probability statistics. If private parties want to operate gambling <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=27922\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-briefly","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7gm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27923,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27922\/revisions\/27923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}