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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Michael Nelson

Why the Wannabe Next Governor of Arkansas Hates Me

Bill Halter is the latest in a line of Rhodes-Scholars-named-Bill-turned-talented-Arkansas-Democratic-politicians (think Clinton and Fulbright). Halter tried to run for governor in 2006, got nowhere, downshifted to run for lieutenant governor that year, won, and by all accounts is biding his time until the governorship opens up again. The issue Halter has been riding from the start — it’s on the ballot this November as a result of his efforts — is his proposal for a state lottery.

Less than 50 years ago, no state owned and operated a lottery; today, 43 states do. Not surprisingly, the South was the slowest region of the country to embrace lottery gambling, but eight of the 11 Southern states now have one. The winning formula for Southern lotteries was set by Zell Miller when he ran for governor of Georgia in 1990: promise to use the proceeds of the lottery to fund college scholarships. Miller got the idea from his then-little-known campaign consultant, James Carville.

The idea spread among Democrats trying to buck the South’s rising Republican tide. In 1998 the lottery was a political winner for Jim Hodges in South Carolina and Don Siegelman in Alabama — they were the only two Democratic challengers in the country to unseat incumbent Republican governors in that election. Steve Cohen, now the congressman from Memphis, championed the idea in Tennessee, which adopted a lottery in 2002. Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina rode the lottery to reelection in 2004. And now Halter has hitched his wagon to the same star in Arkansas.

Here’s where I come into the story. Coauthor Jay Mason and I recently published a book with Louisiana State University Press called How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation.. I was invited to give a lunchtime public lecture about the book in Little Rock by the dean of the William Jefferson Clinton School of Public Service, Skip Rutherford. The book is the farthest thing from a work of advocacy, so when an audience member asked me what I thought of Halter’s proposal, I played it down the middle, summarizing the best arguments that lottery advocates and opponents had used in other states that had considered similar proposals.

“One thing you need to realize, if you adopt a lottery,” I said as part of this summary, citing two of the least-disputed findings in the academic literature on the subject, “is that a steeply disproportionate share of lottery tickets are going to be bought by poor and working-class people and a steeply disproportionate share of the college scholarships are going to go to the sons and daughters of middle and upper-middle-class families. It’s kind of curious that it’s Democrats who promote lotteries, but it’s been one of the few winning issues they’ve had in the South.”

Little did I know the wrath I was arousing. All four Little Rock television stations were there (“That’s a first for us,” one of my hosts marveled; “even Madeleine Albright didn’t get all four”), along with some print reporters. The next day’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette featured a front-page story on my talk that included the following two paragraphs:

“Halter spokesman Bud Jackson said Arkansans ‘are smart enough to trust the facts over some kooky college professor trying to turn a quick buck with a book that is several chapters short of being an honest and complete representation of reality.’

“Arkansans ‘would also be thrilled to know that the kooky professor would prefer tax hikes for all people rather than a voluntary game that would benefit tens of thousands of Arkansans with new scholarships.’”

Well, you got me, Bill Halter. Just another kooky professor trying to get rich by running the well-known scam of university press publishing.

And, yes, if state-funded college scholarships are a good idea — and I think they are — then go out and do the hard work of persuading people to fund them with their taxes. Don’t use the power and moral authority of the state to sucker poor people into losing money in weak-odds lotteries so that kids whose families can afford to send them to college can do so at a discount.


(Image incorporates map graphic from Wikimedia.org and a photo at Flickr Creative Commons)

Posted at 07:30:09 AM on July 30, 2008 | All postings by mnelson

Comments

  1. “Don’t use the power and moral authority of the state to sucker poor people into losing money in weak-odds lotteries so that kids whose families can afford to send them to college can do so at a discount.”

    I always find it interesting that when it comes to the lottery, Republicans think the free market is a bad thing because the government knows better than those ignorant poor people how their money should be spent.

    Yet when it comes to the credit card industry, the oil industry, or the medical industry, the free market is the solution.

    — me · Jul 30, 08:55 AM · #

  2. Mr. Halter’s gubernatorial aspirations were boosted recently after the Chronicle reported on the serious ethical lapses by his main competition, U. of Central Arkansas President Lu Hardin. Hardin needs to resign immediately.

    — Dr. RingDing · Jul 30, 09:16 AM · #

  3. Well, excuse me (another economist) for being elitist, but lottery tickets strike me as being a lot less dangerous than either cigarettes or alcohol…

    — Betsy · Jul 30, 09:40 AM · #

  4. 1,

    Your analogy doesn’t stand up. A state-sponsored lottery is telling people how to spend their money — it involves the state actively promoting and advertising lottery tickets to citizens. Especially as sales slide after the initial frenzy — and they always do — the state, which has become addicted to the new revenue stream, must find ways to boost sales — which involves billboards like the one in a Chicago ghetto a few years ago: “Your ticket from Washington Street to Easy Street — play the Illinois Lottery.”

    — Nathan · Jul 30, 11:15 AM · #

  5. “Your analogy doesn’t stand up. A state-sponsored lottery is telling people how to spend their money — it involves the state actively promoting and advertising lottery tickets to citizens.”

    Not really. The starting point for Republican criticisms of government action is that the government is forcing people to do something. The lottery is a choice yet Republicans want to remove that choice from the market.

    The Republican argument against a national health care plan is that the market gives the best possible outcome. Of course it is seldom explained how that is the case, but if the market gives the best outcome in health care, why doesn’t it give the best outcome with respect to lotteries?

    — me · Jul 30, 12:35 PM · #

  6. Having had my entire college (and post-grad) paid for by the scholarships funded by AR taxpayers, I’ve gotta disagree you.

    The reality of higher ed students in AR is far from the elitist picture you paint. We aren’t the children of white-collar businessmen, but are by and large first-generation collegians, often parents, and members of the work force.

    Perhaps, Professor, your view is tainted the upper-class student body of your own university.

    Throught the years, I’ve lacked health insurance, gas money, currently am eligible for food stamps, and live in a house with a leaking roof—but because of these scholarships, I’m on the road to a career that will not only better my standard of living, but also allow me to give back to the community.

    Yes, call me elitist, but I’ll take a voluntary tax via lottery than a broad tax hike (that we couldn’t get passed anyway) any day of the week.

    — Little Rock · Jul 30, 02:11 PM · #

  7. 5,

    Your comparison of health care and “lotteries” is incoherent.

    A state-sponsored lottery is simply a funding mechanism, not an end in itself. And as a funding mechanism, it is deplorably regressive: despite its “voluntary” nature, we know before any state adopts a lottery that poor people will play the lottery at wildly disproportionate levels. It has happened everywhere the lottery has been introduced. What is more, when states need to boost sagging sales, they naturally target those frequent players — the poor — with slick Madison-Avenue advertising schemes. Seems to me that it is the liberal who (rightly) bemoans any regressivity in the tax code who has no problem with the state pushing a lottery.

    — Nathan · Jul 30, 03:20 PM · #

  8. Last sentence should say, “….that is has some explaining to do.”

    — Nathan · Jul 30, 03:22 PM · #

  9. Isn’t a lottery an illegal “numbers racket” if private enterprise does it?

    If the state monopolistically sponsoring an otherwise illegal activity makes it legal, how about state-sponsored whorehouses, with the proceeds going to education?

    If the free-market choice of buying a lottery ticket or not is such a hot idea, why isn’t free-market competition (better odds, bigger prizes, etc.) between/among private-enterprise lotteries permitted? (I thought free-market Republicans were against state monopolies in non-essential products and services that private enterprise could just as well provide.)

    — Just Passing Through · Jul 30, 09:04 PM · #

  10. “Your comparison of health care and “lotteries” is incoherent.”

    Well, as anyone who has ever taught a class knows, that could be because the speaker is speaking incoherently or the listener is listening incoherently.

    Ronald Reagan’s famous quote, “The 9 most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

    Now contrast that with the section I quoted, “Don’t use the power and moral authority of the state to sucker poor people into losing money in weak-odds lotteries so that kids whose families can afford to send them to college can do so at a discount.”

    The “Reagan solution” is that there are too few lotteries, not too many. The notion that the solution to any problem is that the government should decide an activity is bad for you and make it illegal is unconscionable.

    “we know before any state adopts a lottery that poor people will play the lottery at wildly disproportionate levels”

    Which is what makes restrictions on the lottery regressive, not the lottery itself. Restrictions on the lottery disproportionately harm the poor according to a true Republican. The lottery is not a tax, it is a consumption good.

    My point was that it is hypocritical for a Republican to launch an aggressive attack on a Democratic politician using such arguments. (Note that I am assuming that Mr. Nelson is actually against things like universal health care. Not all Republicans are.)

    — me · Jul 30, 10:19 PM · #

  11. The late Wallace Wilkinson is another individual whose campaign was managed by James Carville. His election as Governor of Kentucky was in large part due to his advocacy of a lottery.

    — Harley · Jul 31, 07:13 AM · #

  12. 10,

    But the crucial difference is that a lottery is a “consumption good” that is created by and promoted by the state. So your Reagan quote about the 9 most terrifying words in the English language would seem to cut against your argument, no?

    — Nathan · Jul 31, 08:34 AM · #

  13. Your other (false) assumption, “me”, is that Nelson represents the opinions of the most Republicans which is unsubstantiated nonsense. “Just Passing Through” captures the essence of the Republican argument in #9; can’t we just forward the discussion in a logical way & save the fallacious political propoganda for some other forum? I think that lotteries are a good idea, by the way . . . people don’t need Big Brother to tell them how to spend their money! :)

    — Smiley · Jul 31, 08:49 AM · #

  14. “If the state monopolistically sponsoring an otherwise illegal activity makes it legal, how about state-sponsored whorehouses, with the proceeds going to education?”

    Now there’s an idea. Here in the Land of Enchantment, the state-run bordellos could be named after Bill Richardson, in recognition of his support of higher education. “Service employees” of the whorehouses might learn to enjoy the same daily work that university professors currently experience – getting screwed.

    — nuevo mexicano · Jul 31, 09:54 AM · #

  15. Mr. Nelson’s argument is that a lottery is a bad idea because poor folks don’t know how to spend their money. He’s not saying it’s a bad idea (at least not here) because it’s run by the government.

    “can’t we just forward the discussion in a logical way & save the fallacious political propoganda for some other forum?”

    As the saying goes, “he started it”. This post was a piece of propaganda about how Democrats, unable to connect with the voters in Southern states, prey on the poor in an attempt to win elections. Garbage posts draw garbage comments. For me to just let this bit of nonsense pass without responding would be irresponsible.

    Or do you think the purpose of the post was to protect the poor?

    — me · Jul 31, 10:54 AM · #

  16. Man, Nelson just gets hated on so much here at the Chronicle. Poor guy, this is one issue I do agree with you on. Down with the lottery!

    — McDuffy · Jul 31, 11:15 AM · #

  17. Although I differ with his premise that lotteries are bad, Nelson substantiates his position with facts and logical reasoning. Your posting, “me”, relies upon a completely unsubstantiated “all Republicans think this” fallacy. If you cannot see the difference, then, the time necessary for further dialogue would be better spent going out to buy lottery tickets :)

    — Smiley · Jul 31, 11:27 AM · #

  18. I’m sure it’s not original, but an accounting student called lotteries taxes on people for being bad at statistics. What’s so wrong about pointing out, as other studies have seemed to do, that the poor tend to spend disproportionately on state lotteries? Or, that the money spent on tickets could be more wisely invested? Knowing that, you then make an informed decision on whether or not to institute one or to plunk down a few bucks if one is available to you?

    Personally, I pay my dream tax only when the jackpot goes over $100 million.

    — DJH · Jul 31, 12:34 PM · #

  19. 15,

    Looks like to me that Nelson’s “purpose of the post” was to defend himself from the Halter campaign after they attacked him for making a demonstrably true and seemingly uncontroversial comment to the William Jefferson Clinton School of Public Service. Did I miss something?

    — Nathan · Jul 31, 01:07 PM · #

  20. When the state conducts, condones, and promotes gambling, I believe it is unethical and immoral. That we are raising money in this manner to support essential human services is dishonorable. The worthiness of some cause (e.g. college scholarships) does not justify using such a method to achieve it.

    — Carl · Jul 31, 01:31 PM · #

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