How the Lottery Preys on the Poor

00:00:00.000 | Good Monday morning everyone. We start this new week talking about gambling, and not for

00:00:09.680 | the first time. Of course, Pastor John, we have a handful of helpful episodes on this

00:00:14.080 | theme already in the podcast archive. Elsewhere, you've talked about how lotteries prey on

00:00:20.720 | the poor. It's a point you made in a 2016 article, which was titled "Seven Reasons

00:00:26.840 | Not to Play the Lottery." Reason number five was that it preys on the poor. You made

00:00:32.680 | the point, but only briefly there. I'd like for you to dwell on this point here in the

00:00:38.000 | podcast. How does the lottery prey on the poor, and why should we care that it does?

00:00:44.520 | Let me begin with a few observations taken from various studies. First, just a quotation

00:00:49.740 | from that article that you mentioned that I wrote on this some time ago. I said that

00:00:55.280 | the lottery supports and encourages a corrosive addiction that preys upon the greed and hopeless

00:01:02.720 | dreams of those entrapped in poverty. I gave this example. Those earning $13,000 or less

00:01:10.680 | spend an astounding 9% of their income on lottery tickets. That was a statistic from

00:01:17.960 | maybe six years ago or so. Here's a few more recent things. People who make less than

00:01:25.480 | $10,000 a year spend on average $597 on lottery tickets. That's 6% of their income.

00:01:34.520 | Another observation. The odds of winning a state Powerball lottery are considerably less

00:01:40.400 | than being struck by lightning. For example, the odds of winning the January 21 Powerball

00:01:47.060 | drawing in Tennessee was one in 292.2 million, while the odds of a lightning strike death

00:01:55.120 | hover in the one in 2.3 million area. It's a pretty weak possibility, to say the least.

00:02:05.880 | Let's clarify what we're talking about. We're not just talking about Powerball with its

00:02:10.460 | million-dollar payout. There are many different kinds of public gambling, lotteries, some

00:02:17.800 | far more destructive for the poor than others. Lotto America, Mega Millions, Lucky for Life,

00:02:26.280 | InstaPlay, Pull Tab, Scratch Games, all of these created by governments to help pay the

00:02:33.120 | bills. So when we think of how the poor spend money on public lotteries, we must not just

00:02:41.520 | think about Powerball. In fact, even poor people recognize that the chances of winning

00:02:49.160 | millions are so remote, that's really not the main draw. That's not where poor people

00:02:55.560 | are spending their money. The main draw is Pull Tabs and Scratch Games. You buy a ticket,

00:03:02.200 | so you can go online and just type in Scratch Games, Minnesota, and find what the offerings

00:03:07.360 | are. In Minnesota, the one-dollar ticket that you can buy online or you can buy at a guest

00:03:13.120 | station is called "Rake It In." That's the name of the ticket for one dollar. You scratch

00:03:18.600 | it off and you'll know immediately if you've won. The payouts are like one dollar. You

00:03:24.160 | get one dollar, or ten, or fifty, or right up to five thousand. So in Minnesota, the

00:03:30.360 | extent for the scratch-offs are from one dollar all the way up to five thousand dollars. These

00:03:35.280 | kinds of games are less attractive to middle-class people and upper-class people because adding

00:03:42.240 | ten dollars or a hundred dollars even to your bank account really doesn't make that much

00:03:46.680 | difference to a middle-class person. But to a poor person, ten, a hundred dollars, or

00:03:52.640 | five hundred dollars, that's like a windfall, and therefore the more frequent payout and

00:04:00.400 | the greater the likelihood of winning draws in disproportionately more poor people for

00:04:07.640 | these kinds of games than for, say, the big Powerball payout. The poorest one-third of

00:04:16.800 | American households purchase one-half of the lottery tickets. The lowest one-fifth of earners

00:04:26.360 | in America have the highest percentage of lottery players. One study showed that the

00:04:33.520 | introduction of scratch-offs grew three times faster in poor areas than in others. But study

00:04:43.960 | after study has shown that across the board, players lose on average forty-seven cents

00:04:53.800 | for every dollar. Or to say it another way, what you purchase on average when you spend

00:05:02.440 | a dollar on the lottery, what you purchase is fifty-three cents. And of course, that

00:05:09.240 | statistic is highly misleading because to arrive at that average of millions of people

00:05:17.280 | investing, you overlook the fact that millions of those people got exactly nothing. And to

00:05:24.080 | bring the average up to getting back fifty-three cents on your dollar, you have to reckon that

00:05:29.800 | some people have won a million dollars, a very, very few people. So it's a truism to

00:05:36.560 | say the lottery did not become a million-dollar industry due to its large output of winners.

00:05:45.800 | Not the way it works. It's true that states have created lotteries to help pay for social

00:05:55.480 | services that aim at benefiting everyone. But there are ironies. Most states allocate

00:06:02.840 | some of the lottery income to providing services for gambling addiction, and some try to provide

00:06:11.080 | a good kind of education, which creates, supposedly, habits of mind and heart, which are the opposite

00:06:20.400 | of the habits they exploit by the lottery itself. Very ironic. Addictive behaviors are

00:06:28.720 | more common among the poor, and living by immediate rather than deferred gratification

00:06:36.960 | is more common among the poor. Publicly funded gambling feeds these kinds of habits, which

00:06:46.040 | are destructive to people's lives. Now, for all these reasons, the lottery has regularly

00:06:54.320 | been called a regressive tax on the poor. Here's what that means. It's a way of

00:07:00.840 | luring the poor, who pay almost no taxes for social services, to pay a kind of tax in a

00:07:10.040 | way that worsens their situation rather than making it better, which is what taxes are

00:07:15.040 | supposed to do. They're supposed to make life better for us, and this is a regressive

00:07:19.440 | tax in the sense that it makes life worse for the poor rather than better.

00:07:25.520 | Now, it would be easy to sarcastically say, "Well, no, actually, it's not a tax on

00:07:34.920 | the poor. It's a tax on the stupid." And I know there are a lot of people who think

00:07:40.360 | that way about the poor, as if the only factor in making a person poor is all their bad habits

00:07:48.920 | or, they might say, stupid habits. And of course, it's true. Personal responsibility

00:07:57.200 | and the failure to act with righteousness and integrity and dependence on God through

00:08:02.720 | grace and through patience and through trust in Jesus Christ is a huge factor in why many

00:08:09.560 | people are poor. But there are many other factors as to why, say, a widow might be stuck

00:08:19.040 | economically earning $20,000 a year, working full-time and spending half her income on

00:08:24.480 | her apartment and unable to afford a car and facing physical and mental challenges few

00:08:29.920 | people know about that make advancement for her of any kind unlikely. There are more factors.

00:08:38.600 | The number one reason why people in such seemingly hopeless situations purchase scratch-offs

00:08:48.480 | is because things already look so hopeless for improvement that the so-called stupidity

00:08:56.840 | of wasting this dollar won't really make any things worse, so why not try? That's,

00:09:03.240 | I think, basically the mindset that drives most of the purchases, a sense of hopelessness.

00:09:12.720 | It's not going to make things worse because there's no hope that they could get better.

00:09:18.560 | And when you already feel hopeless, then arguments against gambling lose most of their force.

00:09:23.800 | Now, from a biblical and Christian point of view, then, I don't think we are the least

00:09:32.640 | bit encouraged by God's Word to stand aloof, roll our eyes at the stupidity of millions

00:09:40.320 | of dollars that roll into the state coffers from people who can barely pay their bills.

00:09:45.080 | I don't think that is basically a Christian standpoint. When I read my Bible, I see a

00:09:51.360 | different disposition, a different heart, a different mind. For example, "Blessed

00:09:57.800 | is the one who considers the poor. In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him" (Psalm

00:10:04.520 | 41). "Whoever mocks the poor, insults his Maker. He who is glad at calamity will not

00:10:12.200 | go unpunished" (Proverbs 17). "Whoever oppresses a poor man, insults his Maker,

00:10:19.240 | but he who is generous to the needy honors him" (Proverbs 14). "Open your mouth,

00:10:25.280 | judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy" (Proverbs 31). "God

00:10:31.000 | raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap" (Psalm 113).

00:10:36.400 | So I think the upshot of all this for Christians is that we should disapprove of and resist

00:10:47.880 | an institution—every form of gambling, I would say. I've written about that elsewhere.

00:10:53.800 | We've talked about that APJ on several occasions. Just gambling itself is a major biblical problem.

00:11:01.760 | So I think we should resist all forms of gambling, all forms of lottery, which fly in the face

00:11:08.040 | of how God intends for His creatures to use the resources He has entrusted to us. You

00:11:15.280 | don't gamble with somebody else's money. It's all God's. And we wittingly or unwittingly

00:11:23.200 | prey upon the vulnerabilities of the poor, and we should resist that kind of institution.

00:11:29.720 | And instead, we should give our thinking and praying and advocating and investing and planning

00:11:37.760 | toward, one, the removal of unnecessary barriers to productive work and gainful employment

00:11:45.040 | among the poor; two, the removal of incentives and allurements toward waste and squandering

00:11:51.520 | and irresponsibility; and three, instead seek to put in place encouragements toward deferred

00:12:01.440 | gratification; and finally, the creation of responsibility and hope, especially through

00:12:10.160 | the gospel in people's lives.

00:12:12.800 | Yeah, you don't gamble with somebody else's money. That's a great point. Thank you, Pastor

00:12:17.760 | John, and thank you for joining us today. You can ask a question of your own, search

00:12:22.080 | our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast, all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:30.760 | We've all been there. Maybe you're there right now. You see problems in every direction in

00:12:36.240 | your life. All you see are difficulties. You see your sins, your shortcomings, your challenges,

00:12:41.680 | the places in your life that have been neglected. And you are now tempted to live a life that

00:12:46.360 | has shrunk down to the size of all the problems that you see in your life. Well, Pastor John

00:12:51.520 | has been there. And if this is where you're at, you need to hear what he learned from

00:12:56.080 | a season in his life. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday

00:12:59.560 | for that. We'll see you shortly.

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How the Lottery Preys on the Poor

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