Next, the lottery essentially is a voluntary tax on people who like to gamble on lottery tickets (and although personally I like it when I don’t get taxed), I think education is something important enough that every tax payer in our society ought to contribute to, in a progressive tax structure. Just as every tax payer contributes to every other tax-funded service in a progressive tax structure. (Side point: Every study done indicates that it is the poorest in our society that buy most of the lottery tickets, making this a regressive tax, and furthermore, the habitual gambling on lottery tickets contributes to the lack of health of our society — gambling, IMHO, is not good for society).

Now imagine if we could eliminate that lottery bureaucracy by eliminating the lottery and obtaining the funds from taxation. The existing tax bureaucracy would handle the funds (as it handles all tax funds now), there are no more payments to Lottery bureaucracy, no more payments to lottery advertisement or ad agencies, and as a result, more money would be available for education.

Now, having said all that, I realize that I have adopted a position that very few people will agree with — let’s raise taxes a little and get rid of the lottery, but I honestly believe we will all be better off if this was how NY State operated.

Thanks for this summary. I’m glad Spitz upgraded the net-metering thang. I can’t believe it didn’t include businesses before. Allowing biz to sell back power they generate is win-win-win: it helps biz keep costs down, helps spur local renewable businesses, helps use less resources, and helps the environment. What a freaking no-brainer.

I also clarified your sentence about the diff between one-shots and the lottery plan, to make the difference clearer. Feel free to change back if I missed your point.

Regardless, I believe that using the lottery as a way to raise funds for Education is a terribly inefficient method of raising money for this crucial aspect of our society.