After that, costs continue to rise while revenues decline. The lottery is sold to states with a promise of better-funded, and by implication, better quality education. What actually happens once a lottery is in place is a different story. Richard Syron, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, describes gambling expenditures as money extracted from other consumer spending. You're just taking money from one area and putting it somewhere else.
State lotteries make more business for bookmakers.
Simply put, the stooges who approved lotteries, etc. became our unwitting front and silent partners. Huge campaign contributions flow to both parties from the gambling lottery. Whether to meet budget shortfalls or add new programs, legalized gambling appears to be the goose that laid the golden egg. There is a political price to pay for raising taxes, and a political price to pay for cutting services. In this double bind, sometimes political leaders who claim to disapprove of gambling become politically dependent on it.