GREENWOOD — Now even House Speaker Philip Gunn is weakening on establishing a lottery in Mississippi.
Can it be much longer before this inefficient “voluntary tax” that takes advantage of human weakness, especially among those of lower income, becomes reality in this state?
Gunn has been one of the steadfast opponents of a state lottery. He hasn’t made it impossible for his chamber to consider lottery proposals, but he hasn’t greased the skids for them either.
Gunn announced recently, however, that he was appointing a panel, led by House Gaming Committee Chairman Richard Bennett, to further study the issue.
“I’m open to looking at it,” Gunn said in announcing the study. “I don’t think it’s going to be the golden egg that everybody thinks it is.”
The House speaker is the latest high-profile lottery opponent to show signs of going soft on the issue. Another is Gov. Phil Bryant, who this past year morphed from being staunchly against a lottery to nearly cheering for one.
The Republican leadership did not originate this discussion of a lottery. Rather, it is following the lead of some Democratic lawmakers who have long pined for a state-sponsored and -operated game of chance. The only remaining statewide Democratic officeholder, Attorney General Jim Hood, is for it, too.
Although support for a lottery is becoming increasingly bipartisan, it is a unity forged in envy and desperation. Mississippi is envious of the other 44 states, including most of its neighbors, with a lottery. And it has become desperate for revenue because of a host of irresponsible tax cuts that have squeezed the treasury and agency budgets.
Gunn, even while he announced the study committee, seems to grasp that the lottery would be an inefficient way to plug the state’s budget holes. He questioned whether lottery tickets are really new money or whether they cannibalize from other state revenue streams, most notably the sales tax. When a consumer buys $10 worth of lottery tickets, is that money that would have been spent instead at the store on taxable purchases?
Plus there’s a huge marketing and collection cost with lotteries. Most states with lotteries end up netting only about a third of what’s sold in lottery tickets by the time they pay out the prizes and cover their advertising and administrative expenses.
The worst thing, though, about a lottery is it takes advantage of the undereducated and gullible, deliberately enticing them with the immensely slim chance of getting rich overnight while just making most of them poorer. Those who put the greatest proportion of their income to playing the lottery are also those who can least afford it. Even if most of those near the poverty line in Mississippi are in favor of a lottery, it would be morally wrong for the state to take advantage of their human frailty.
A lottery is another surreptitious way to shift the burden of funding government from the well-to-do to the poor. It’s just a less obvious mechanism than doling out corporate tax breaks or maintaining a high sales tax on food.
Kalich is editor and publisher of The Greenwood Commonwealth.
