Today I read of a lottery proposal for the state of Arkansas in which a critic, on moral grounds, argued that a Lottery was "a tax on idiocy".
I reacted adversely at first, for I purchase a Lottery ticket a few times each year for the shear fun of the momentary expectation and because the dollar it costs seems trivial at that moment. Then I began to wonder about the people who purchase them more often, some of them with iron discipline, and I began to see the critic's point.
To spend several hundred or a thousand dollars each year on a brazillion-to-one chance at acquiring enough money to last a few years or even a lifetime does appear to transcend the boundary between irresponsibility (of which we are all guilty of in some form at some time) into the realm of "idiocy". Particularly if the money spent on Lottery tickets would make a new car affordable a year earlier, or perhaps making a week-long vacation to a nice resort easily within reach.
Such is the powerful nature of the need for instant gratification when combined with the desire for wealth without effort and sacrifice, especially it the state sponsors it with so-called altruistic intentions.
Most immoral indeed.
Yet upon further examination, I realized that as such, a Lottery was but the tip of the iceberg, in terms of "taxing idiocy". For lawmakers (and they do take that definition most seriously) have, in countless other forms of taxation, made so many laws and regulations implementing them, as to create vast loopholes for their circumvention. Which means that those who know of the loopholes can use them to their benefit, and those who don't, pay the taxes, ... like IDIOTS!!!
Even more immoral.
So from now on, when you see a Politician talking about the importance of 'Education', will you notice that they are SMILING?
Will you wonder WHY?
stephenhurleysmith
5feb2007
