Lottery Waste
One of the most socially redeeming aspects of national lottery games is the fact that a fixed percentage of every pound, dollar or euro spent on tickets goes towards "good causes". Unfortunately, one of the least attractive things about national lotteries is that the good cause fund can be used in whatever way the fund managers decree to be wise, and sometimes their decisions aren't ones that the majority of lottery players would support.
Developing a shelter for the homeless and a training programme to help these people rebuild their lives is, in my book, a good cause worth supporting. Handing millions of pounds to the government because it couldn't be bothered to get the budget figures right on some half-baked and ultimately redundant hare-brained scheme, on the other hand, isn't.
Personally, I think it would be a very good idea to have a "Good Cause Checklist" on the back of every lottery play slip so that each player can choose exactly where their own good cause contribution will go. I'm not saying that we should be given a list of each individual charitable organisation served by the good cause fund, but we could at least be given a list of categories.
For example, if we were given a list of charity types such as, Homelessness, Youth Programmes, Child Care Programmes, Government Causes and Equal Division, we could decide whether we wanted to support the homeless, children, teens or government budget blunders. Or, if we really had no preference, we could tick the Equal Division option and have our money distributed equally between all of the other options. In reality we would probably be given a longer list than the one used here for example purposes, but you get the idea.
Now some will say that doing things this way would mean that one type of charitable cause may end up with nothing if we let "the people" decide on such matters, but I don't think this reasoning presents an accurate view of society. I am sure that programmes for the homeless, children, teens and other legitimate groups would all benefit simply because of the number of people there are playing the lottery and the fact that each player will have their own "favourite" charity.
The only group that might not fare so well is the one serving "government budget blunders", and that's why this idea will never happen in the real world. Giving lottery players a choice about where their individual contribution to good causes actually goes is entirely logical, fair and could well help us connect more directly to the charitable side of the game. But the organisers know that the majority of lottery players would not volunteer to effectively pay more tax to the government so that it can spend our cash on bad ideas implemented poorly.
Maybe one day people will realise that government is there to serve us, and not to tell us what to do or to spend our hard-earned money on our behalf. Until then, the chances are that we will continue having our good cause contributions allocated by members of the "wisdom committee" to whatever scheme happens to score them the most brownie points among their political superiors.
Article Last Updated: 08/05/2007 13:42:12
