In a lottery, numbers are drawn from a pool of tickets to determine winners. The drawing can be done manually, mechanically (such as shaking or tossing), or with a computer system. A computer-based system is more efficient for processing large numbers of tickets and generating winning combinations of numbers or symbols. Typically, the winners are announced on television. People buy tickets to the lottery for entertainment value, a desire to win big money, or both. While there have been cases of exploitation in lotteries, most people who play the lottery do so responsibly.
During the late-twentieth century, governments faced budget crises that forced them to cut services or raise taxes. Many voters resented paying higher taxes, so politicians turned to the lottery as a way to raise funds without raising taxes. It was a “budgetary miracle,” as Cohen puts it: state-run gambling allowed legislators to bolster existing services with revenue that voters would not object to, even though it relied on chance.
The earliest lotteries, which sold tickets with cash prizes, are documented in the town records of the Low Countries in the fifteenth century. They were a common method of raising money to pay for walls and town fortifications, as well as to help the poor. The word lottery derives from the Latin term for “drawing lots.”
In the early days of America, lotteries were entangled with slavery in unpredictable ways. George Washington managed a lottery that gave away human beings, and one formerly enslaved man bought his freedom in a South Carolina lottery and went on to foment a slave rebellion. In general, however, the enslaved did not participate in the early lotteries because they were too expensive.
Despite their aversion to gambling, the wealthy still play the lottery. According to a report by the consumer financial company Bankrate, Americans earning more than fifty thousand dollars per year spend, on average, one per cent of their incomes on tickets. In contrast, those earning less than thirty thousand dollars spend thirteen per cent of their incomes. This disparity is largely the result of the fact that rich people can afford to purchase far more tickets than their poor counterparts.