Official lottery is a government-run game in which numbers are drawn to determine prizes. In the United States, state lotteries have been legalized since 1964 and generate more than $42 billion annually in revenue for public services, mainly education. However, critics of the game have raised concerns that it is a form of commercialized gambling and that it preys on poor people.

While the idea of a state-sponsored lottery may seem strange to modern readers, in fact, it is quite common around the world and has been used as a source of funding for everything from town fortifications in the fourteenth century to religious congregations in the eighteenth. In the 17th century, lotteries helped fund several churches in Paris, despite strong Protestant proscriptions against gambling.

By the late twentieth century, as states began to feel the squeeze of inflation and an anti-tax movement that was growing, the lottery became appealing. State governments, especially in the Northeast and Rust Belt, saw it as a way to expand social safety nets without infuriating an already-disgruntled electorate.

But lottery critics had other worries as well. They were worried about the ethics of lotteries, and about how much money state governments stood to gain from them. They also were concerned that the prizes in lotteries were often too small to attract players. In the end, they argued that people were paying into a system that was mathematically stacked against them and that they would be better off with a different source of revenue for public services.