The Lottery

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John Oliver: The lottery, it’s the second best use of magic marker on ping pong balls since Kermit the Frog’s eyes. Now this past week saw a huge mega millions draw.

Narrator: A big winning lottery ticket was sold in New York. Lots of people around here have been peeking at their lottery tickets this morning. In a mega millions mystery this evening, That 321 million dollar jackpot, the search for the winner is on tonight.

John Oliver: Well the winner shouldn’t be too hard to find. If someone in your work this week marched in and told everyone to go F**k themselves before flipping their desk over and storming out, that’s probably your winner right there.. But don’t worry if you didn’t hit the jackpot. You will frankly have an unbelievable number of other opportunities to play. 44 states currently have lotteries and you can’t have missed the commercials featuring everything from a ping-pong ball thunderstorm. To a furry dressed as a cat playing with a ball of money to a weird lucky man who from some reason decided to spend his lottery winnings terrifying a penguin by taking it hang-gliding. That is a bizarrely specific use of a big lottery win. Look if my numbers come up, I'm strapping a penguin to my chest and I’m taking It to the skies. F**k you evolution I decide who flies! That’s my choice, my choice!. Lottery commercials are incredibly seductive and they’re also everywhere, states spend half a billion dollars on them every year and the reason they do that is that the lottery is a massive money maker for them.

Narrator: Last year alone lottery sales totaled about 68 billion dollars.

John Oliver: 68 Billion, that’s more than Americans spent last year on movie tickets, music, porn, NFL, MLB and videogames combined. Which means Americans basically spent more on the lottery than they spent on America. And if you think about it, it’s a little strange for the government to be running what is basically a gigantic gambling business. But we don’t think about lotteries like that perhaps because they’re sold to us more as charitable foundations

Narrator: 3 billion dollars for education opens a lot of door. The Tennessee lottery, game-changing life changing fun. Education matters to Oregonians, that’s why over 5 billion in lottery dollars have gone to support public education. The Oregon lottery it does good things. Every time you play a New york lottery game, a portion of your sale goes to eight New York state school children just like them. New york lottery everybody wins.

John Oliver: Thank you for being a friend. Those ads are basically implying that anyone who does not play the lottery is selfish. Hey why don’t you want to educate these harmonizing children you f*****g monster. So lets take a look at those slogans, everybody wins, the lottery does good things, and its game-changing, life-changing fun. Is it? Does it? And do They? Lets start with the basics. The lottery generates 68 billions in sales a year so where does that money come from?

Narrator: Over the course of the last two decades, studies have found lower income households spend a higher percentage of their money on lottery tickets.

John Oliver: That kind of makes sense, lots of people like to gamble and for lower income households the lottery is an affordable way to do it. Generally when wealthy people want to take risks with their money they choose to either invest in the stock market or they leave their wife for Amber without signing a prenupt. Because Amber’s forever, besides, she just gets you. She’s a little tiring but she'll be there. The lottery is in the business of selling people hope and they do a great job of that

Narrator: Start a college fund for our kids. Start a college fund for their kids. A game with jackpots worthy of your dreams. Mega millions dream mega.

John Oliver: That feels like an ad for a mutual fund but crucially the lottery is not an investment. Because its worth mentioning that those mega dreams are mega unlikely to happen

Narrator: What are the real chances of winning a lousy 1 in 176 million. Winning the mega millions is a kin to getting struck by lightning at the same time your being eaten by a shark

John Oliver: Ok that is both a invocative image and an amazing pitch for a movie. Ok so there’s this guy he’s getting eaten by a shark, see lightning hits him he switches minds with the shark. The shark wins the lottery, its freaky Friday meets jaws. I'm calling it Slumshock Gillionaire. Slumshock Gillionaire. Channing Tatum has passed. Now the lottery does have some smaller games and prizes where the odds are a little better but even then it pays out a much lower percentage of its revenue then even in horse racing. And the worst part is, when you lose the lottery and your angry with you're ticket you don’t have the satisfaction of knowing it will be turned into dog food. And yet, we are still drawn to the lottery. Partly because we are told to ignore the odds.

Narrator: Its your dream anything can happen. Dream. Play. Win. Hey you never know. Power your dreams for just two bucks

John Oliver: Those ads are so effective in the time it took you to get through that montage, I went out and bought all these lottery tickets. Someone’s got to win it might as well be me. But even when people do win big things have a tendency to go south fast. We’ve all seen tragic headlines about lottery winners like a lottery winner blows 27 million, lottery winner found dead in bed or brother hired hit man over 16 million jackpot win. It seems like winning the lottery can be like marrying Tom Cruise. Sure it seems amazing in your mind. You might even dream about it happening one day, but if it actually does five years later the magic will be over, you will be estranged from your family and you will have seen things you can never un-see, never. In Israel, lottery winners are photographed wearing masks to protect their identities. And in the nineties this is how one man from Garza collected his prize.

Narrator: Most lottery winners don’t turn up with a bag over their head, but this twenty four year old Palestinian wanted to remain anonymous.

John Oliver: That’s right winning the lottery is such a curse that you can find yourself in the middle east with a bag over your head because something good happened to you. So why do people play. Well for some they cant stop. The lottery can be very addictive and States know this. Many lotteries are for resources to help problem gamblers. The Illinois lottery even has a section on their website for responsible gaming. Although when we clicked on the link and this is true we got a pop up ad for the lotto. Seriously? Illinois, there is a reason that the first step in a 12 step program isn’t Congratulations for starting the program, why not reward, why not reward yourself with a refreshing gin and tonic! Cheers. Look I'm sure, that that is just an innocent mistake just like I'm sure that it’s a coincidence that if you Google lottery intervention this is what comes up.

Narrator: Need a lottery intervention? Play the new D.C. fast play games from the D.C. lottery feel the thrill of winning instantly.

John Oliver: Are you kidding me? Someone up at D.C. lottery deserves a promotion before they go directly to hell. And at the very same time they’re supposedly addressing problem gambling States are actively expanding into even more addictive products. Just look at Oregon

Narrator: The lottery takes in about a billion dollars every two years for the state. About 80% of it maybe even more about 86, 90% of it – yea that’s what were running right there on the screen- comes from one source and that’s these video machines, mostly video slot machines or video poker.

John Oliver: The vast majority of Oregon’s lottery income comes from video slots and video poker meaning that Oregon claims that this is a lottery machine. Because of course it is just like this is a lottery wheel, and this is a lottery table and of course we all remember Martin Scorsee’s movie Lottery. Machines like these are not only addictive they’re incredibly lucrative. Internal Oregon lottery data indicates that regular lottery players lost and average of 106 dollars per year. Whereas video poker and slots players lost an average of 2564 dollars, that’s an insane amount of money. You could buy a 98 mazda with that money and you should, you should. Its got a moon roof and 6 way speakers. You should get to it right now and drive in the opposite direction of any video poker machine, although good luck with that if you live in Oregon because these machines are everywhere. There are more than 12000 of them in the state, and that kind of ubiquity puts some people in serious danger

Narrator: My boyfriend and I have gotten into fights over you know. I'll go out, you know, I'm just going somewhere with a friend of mine and I end up playing video poker or I’m supposed to go to the store and buy food and I come home with no food and no money as soon as I walk in the door he knows and then we don’t have any food.

John Oliver: Remember the machines that are causing her such trouble are run by the state. A state, which proclaims that the lottery does good things. And at this point I'm thinking that it may not be a coincidence that the logo for the Oregon State lottery is someone crossing their fingers the universal sign for lying. Ok so maybe the next question should be this. Why do state lawmakers keep approving all this? Well as those singing children told us Lotteries are really all about good causes like education and that’s always been the excuse. State lotteries were illegal in this country until 1964 when New Hampshire launched the first one under the guise of a very familiar message

Narrator: This is the first one in our country and I would like to participate in it. And I also feel that it’s for a very good cause of education. I don’t think there’s a better reason for buying one of these

John Oliver: Well there probably isn’t a better reason, but there are plenty of better ways to fund education. Sales tax, bake sale or simply putting cash into an envelope, writing school on it and mailing it. Because for all the claims that lotteries are a huge boost to education the reality is a little different.

Narrator: Our investigation of government spending in the 44 states that dedicate lottery funds for education yields a stunningly bad report card. The percentage of state spending on education is down or flat in 21 of those states from coast to coast.

John Oliver: Lotteries provided no additional funding for education in 21 out of 44 states. As math students in one of those places would put it that is nearly 50%. How is this possible? But look lets just look at North Carolina; their governor inaugurated the North Carolina Education Lottery nearly a decade ago with big promises.

Narrator: When the lottery is fully implemented, we’ll be adding another half billion dollars annually for education

John Oliver: Half a billion extra that sounds great. You’d think by now all North Carolina preschoolers would be strutting around in finer spoke suits quoting Nature and Kierkaguard but in fact North Carolina County spends less per student in education than it did before the lottery even began. And if your thinking how the f**k is that possible its because money in state budgets tends to move around a lot. Trying to add money for just one place is a lot like trying to piss in one corner of the swimming pool, its going all over the place no matter what you try to do. Let me give you just a narrow example. In 2012 North Carolina used 100 million dollars for school construction but that didn’t mean that the school construction budget was 100 million bigger than what it would have been. Because as that money was flowing in, other money was flowing out

Narrator: A portion of corporate income taxes used to go toward construction but when the lottery passed, that tax money went away and substituted with lottery revenue

John Oliver: And where did that corporate tax money go? Who knows? There’s not even a warm spot where it once was. But in a completely unconnected development North Carolina plans to cut corporate taxes substantially over the next few years. So thanks for playing the education lottery North Carolina better luck next time. But despite all this states are not only keeping faith in lotteries they’re doubling down and trying to reach new players by putting it on your cell phone. Illinois, launched an app this year to let you buy lottery tickets on your phone which is terrifying because we all know that if starting right now your mother could play the lottery as easily as she plays candy crush in three weeks she’d be preparing thanksgiving dinner over a trash can fire. But I'm sure that Illinois will make the same arguments that everyone does to justify state sponsored gambling. Hey it brings in money for good causes. Except as I think we’ve seen by now, lotteries are bad for losers, often bad for winners and a pretty compromising way to assist state budgets. Think about it this way, gambling is a little bit like alcohol, most people like it, some are addicted to it, and its not like the state can or should outlaw it all together but it would be a little strange if the State was in the liquor business advertising it by claiming that every shot of vodka you drink helps school children learn. Thank me for being a friend. I'm going to get those kids an eye patch, I’m a winner, everybody’s a winner.