Powerball Pork

It is truly incredible that the Powerball Lottery tomorrow evening will likely approach $1.5 billion, which testifies to the long odds of winning the prize. The exceptional prize level also testifies to how much money is taken in by states that have lottery games. Early on, most states that enacted lotteries earmarked the revenue for a very good cause: education. But big jackpots raises the question of whether the dollars are really going to our schools.

I checked around and found that yes, many states do allocate the “net” proceeds to education. But not surprisingly, just as many have veered away from the intended cause and either spread the revenue around for not such good causes, otherwise known as pork, or just dumped it into the general revenue bin for state bureaucrats to spend to their hearts content.