I heard this on Dave Ramsey’s show last night and could not believe it. But it didn’t take much googling to find it:

I am the first to admit that I find the whole concept of playing any sort of lottery pretty confusing. When I approach the counter at my local minimart and see all of the various scratch off cards and ticket machines,  I am completely baffled. And I am always afraid that the harried checkout lady – not to mention the customers in line behind me – would be totally irritated if I asked her to stop and explain how it all works to me. So I’ve never played, meaning I’ve never been a winner.

However, here in Tennessee, where I live, my kids will be lottery winners whether or not I ever figure out how to buy a ticket. That’s because our state utilizes state lottery profits to fund the HOPE Scholarship Program, which  pays pretty much the entire cost of tuition (just tuition – not books or housing) for eligible Tennessee students who want to attend any of our state colleges or universities.

The HOPE Scholarship Program has had its hiccups along the way, and there continue to be critics of the idea of having a state lottery at all, but in the past few years, I’ve loved seeing and reading media coverage of all the Tennessee kids who have been able to go to college on the HOPE Scholarship; in many cases, these lottery scholarship recipients are the first members of their family to take their education past high school.  That’s pretty cool.

First thing to remember, the lottery doesn’t just sit there. It is a marketed product. The state of Tennessee advertises that one should play the lottery to win money. It is stupid. There is no excuse for believing the marketing. But the state is actively seducing people to play this game.

Second thing to notice: Do the people who win these scholarships tend to be the people who play the lottery. The lovely aspect of the blog post quoted above is that most such people don’t even understand how the lottery is played. No, they are the social class that gets free money to send their kids to college.

And Third, who does play these games? The poor people. The state actively encourages poor people in bad habits and exploits them to pay for the education of richer and better educated children. It does what it can to perpetuate poverty and benefit from contributing to the poverty of the poor.

Evil.

PS. If you want to know why I used the cheetah-gazelle comparison: go here.