All that glitters…
- Mar 19, 2008
Gambling in all its many now-legal forms has for years been promoted to the American people as a way to get rich quick and short-circuit all the quaint old notions about ambition and working hard to get ahead. Very few months pass without big newspaper headlines describing someone down on their luck who has just won a million dollars at a casino or in a state-sponsored lottery.
On the heels of a recently-announced, multi-state lottery win of almost $280 million, Mississippi legislators have again this year been mulling a lottery proposal that would tie proceeds to free college educations for qualified students. The bill died in committee, but these things have a way of being resurrected in the Legislature—and there’s always next year’s legislative session and the year after that. We’d best be watchful.
No one wants to deny a promising young person the ability to go to college, but is a lottery the way to fund such a worthy goal? Does the nobility of using lottery proceeds for education outweigh the downside of legalized gambling?
It’s a fact that most people who purchase lottery tickets don’t do so to support education. They do it because their state government has convinced them a lottery is the way to get rich quick.
Facing bankruptcy? Can’t pay your medical bills? Is the mortgage company foreclosing on your home? No problem! Everything can be taken care of with the purchase of a fistful of lottery tickets—because we all know that money solves everything, right?
Not exactly. The web site, Bankrate.com, some time ago published a series of authoritative articles written by Ellen Goodstein that really nails down the fantasy/fallacy of gambling as a ticket to Easy Street.
“For a lot of people, winning the lottery is the American dream. But for many lottery winners, the reality is more like a nightmare,” Goodstein writes.
“‘Winning the lottery isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be,’ says Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey lottery not just once but twice (1985, 1986) to the tune of $5.4 million. Today the money is all gone and Adams lives in a trailer.
“‘I won the American dream but I lost it, too. It was a very hard fall. It’s called rock bottom,’ says Adams.”
Another lottery winner tracked down by Goodstein, William “Bud” Post, won more than $16 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988. Within a year, all the money was gone and he was one million dollars in debt. His brother allegedly attempted to hire a hit man to kill him for the money, and Post himself served a sentence for shooting at a bill collector.
Post is now bankrupt and living off $450 a month in Social Security and food stamps. “I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare,” he told Goodstein.
Other lottery winners who actually lost in the long run, according to Goodstein, include:
- Suzanne Mullins, who won $4.2 million in the Virginia Lottery in 1993. She is now deeply in debt and facing a judgment against her of nearly $155,000.
- Ken Proxmire, who won one million dollars in the Michigan lottery. Within five years, he was forced to file bankruptcy.
- Willie Hurt, who also won the Michigan lottery to the tune of $3.1 million in 1989.
Two years later, he was penniless and charged wit murder.
- Janite Lee won $18 million in the Missouri Lottery in 1993, but filed for bankruptcy a few years later with only $700 in assets.
- A winner who wished to be identified only as being from the Southeast, won a $4.2 million lottery jackpot in the early 1990s but is now broke, divorced, and living with his/her adult children.
All of those horror stories are merely one dark side of legalized gambling that Mississippians should consider when we are confronted with the next pie-in-the-sky scheme from the gambling/political complex in this state.
As a matter of fact, Mississippi could be the next sad entry on Goodstein’s losers list. As legislators struggle yet again with the annual state budget crisis, we should all remember that the gambling/political complex assured us (and continues to assure us to this day) that legalized gambling will have us rolling in money forever.
Our schools were supposed to be flush with perpetual funding, but that hasn’t happened. Our highways were going to be the envy of the nation, but that hasn’t happened. The unfulfilled promises could go on, ad nauseum.
We’ve heard it many times from many wise people: We cannot gamble our way to prosperity. When will we come to our senses?
This article is reprinted from the March 13, 2008, issue of The Baptist Record, the newsjournal of the Mississippi Baptist Convention.
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