Financing A Proper Government - Lotteries

Now this may seem as a little bit of a strange way of generating revenue for a government but it has been done in Europe. In the UK the national Lottery Funds such things as "heritage" programs, and while certainly not a legitimate function of government is does demonstrate the utility of this method.

The question is how much utility?

In fiscal year 04 U.S. lotteries turned over $14.5 billion ($US) to their beneficiaries. * Since their creation Lotteries in the US have generated $234.089 Billion dollars. * Now obviously this is a total from all the lotteries played, and there is no reason to believe that independent, private interests would not still use lotteries to generate money for their causes, but that is not to say that a voluntarily funded government could not use the same vehicle to money.

Of course the government lottery would have to be run by a private company (to keep the government out of the business of business) but that is a much easier way to do it anyway. Why have all the bureaucracy when you can pay someone else to manage it?

It's impossible to determine how much revenue the government would realize through a program like this but if it is even equal to 1% of the total that is still a sum of $145,000,000 a year (using the 2006 figures). Just in case you were wondering that is more than enough to fund the Supreme Court ($.088b) of the US with enough left over for the Congressional Budget Office ($.043) *

Over time the amount becomes quite impressive. Since the New Hampshire Lottery was formed in 1964 it has raised more than $200 billion for government programs in North America.