A lottery is a scheme for allocating prizes by random selection. It may be used in the distribution of tickets for an event or a piece of real estate, or it may be used to determine who will receive a particular service or benefit from the government. It is not to be confused with an auction, where the prize is a specific good or service that must be won by a bidding process. A slang term for the lottery is “pick-up.”

In a financial sense, lotteries dish out cash prizes to paying participants, who pay a small amount for the privilege of entering. Some are run by state governments, while others are private enterprises operated by individuals or corporations. In either case, winning a prize usually requires the ticket holder to match a set of numbers, or some other designation, with those randomly selected by a machine. Many people, including some of the very rich, make a living through this activity. A Michigan couple, for example, made $27 million in nine years playing state-run games.

Almost all states have now adopted some form of lottery. The only six that don’t are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Utah and Nevada — home to Las Vegas, naturally. A prevailing view is that the lottery is an important source of revenue for poorer states, which would otherwise have trouble raising taxes or cutting services. Despite the fact that it is a form of gambling, the lottery has long been promoted as a harmless way to raise money for social programs.

The idea that the lottery could be an effective substitute for taxes was especially popular in the immediate post-World War II period, when state budgets were booming and a large social safety net enabled states to expand their services without raising onerous taxes on the middle class and working class. But, in the nineteen-sixties, inflation and the cost of the Vietnam War began to deflate that arrangement, requiring states to choose between raising taxes or cutting services, neither of which were popular options with voters.

In response, advocates of lottery legalization shifted their pitch. Instead of trying to sell the idea that a lottery would float the entire state budget, they focused on a single line item that was popular and nonpartisan—usually education but sometimes elder care or public parks. This more limited approach also enabled proponents to focus on the supposedly harmless nature of gambling, while obscuring its regressive tendencies. By doing so, they hope to convince voters that supporting the lottery is not inherently the same as supporting gambling itself. The result has been a rise in popularity for the lottery, even as critics continue to point to its regressive effects and compulsive addictiveness.