Lottery is a type of gambling wherein people purchase tickets for a chance to win a prize ranging from cash to goods and services. It is a common way to raise money for state governments and other charities. In the US, people spend over $80 Billion on lottery tickets each year. It’s no wonder that Americans struggle to have even $400 in emergency savings! But why are we so obsessed with the chance to win the big jackpot? Lottery is not the answer to a lack of money or a lack of opportunity; it’s a sign of deeper issues in our society.
Lotteries are a form of social engineering that is intended to alleviate the poor’s sense of hopelessness by offering them a chance at winning large sums of money, and at the same time, it provides an incentive for them to continue consuming, which will in turn stimulate the economy. It is a tool of the ruling class to control the masses, and it works by promoting consumption, and creating an illusion of prosperity.
The practice of making decisions and determining fates by casting lots dates back to ancient times, and lotteries have been popular as a means of raising money for both public and private purposes throughout history. In the 15th century, the first public lotteries to offer tickets with prizes in the form of cash were held in towns across the Low Countries, including Bruges and Ghent. They were used to raise funds for town fortifications and to help the poor.
Many of these early lotteries were accompanied by a variety of other promotional activities, which helped to build the brands of the companies that promoted them. In addition, many were heavily subsidized by government. As a result, the winners of these early lotteries tended to be wealthy families who were already well-established in their communities. The majority of the participants, however, were ordinary citizens who had a very long chance of winning.
Today, the majority of state lotteries operate on a similar model. They start by legitimizing a state monopoly for themselves; establish a public agency or corporation to run the lottery (as opposed to licensing a private firm in exchange for a percentage of the profits); begin operations with a modest number of relatively simple games; and, as the demand for additional revenues grows, progressively expand their game offerings.
This expansion is not always based on an objective analysis of the state’s financial health, but on the need to retain and increase overall consumer approval. Studies have shown that lottery popularity tends to correlate strongly with the level of state taxes and with the state’s perceived fiscal condition, but not with its actual financial health.
Jackson’s depiction of the village lottery is a stinging indictment of blindly following tradition, and a reminder of how the human heart can be so corrupted. His choice of Tessie Hutchinson as the winner reveals a scapegoating mechanism that serves to defuse the average villager’s deep, inarticulate dissatisfaction with the social order in which he lives by channeling it into anger directed at those who are considered the victims of that system.
