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Of life, lotteries, taxation and the associated odds
Keeble McFarlane
Saturday, January 19, 2008
"If you don't have a ticket, you don't have a chance!" was the slogan central to a popular sweepstake promotion many of us remember from the 1950s and 60s. A five-shilling sweepstake ticket could yield a prize of £20,000, a not inconsiderable sum which allowed the winner to start a business or build a house. (For the members of the dollar generation, a pound contained 20 shillings.) In those days a pound was worth US$2.80, and prices for most commodities were relatively low, so you can see the attraction sweepstakes had for many people. It was legal, although frowned upon in genteel circles, to buy various forms of lottery, including raffles, sweepstakes, English football pools and betting on horse races, either at the track or through off-track agents. The conservative churches deemed any form of gambling as a sin, but the Roman Catholic church interpreted things differently, and ran raffles to raise money for its various community outreach programmes.
One form of gambling which received the constant attention of the police was the one favoured most by the poor (and which had the smallest payouts). Peaka peow, which was operated by some Chinese entrepreneurs, used the simple formula of a page of perhaps 10 lines and 15 or so columns of Chinese characters printed at random. The person performing the day's settings would select two or three groups of characters which, when put together, would mean something, and mark them accordingly. When you bought a ticket, you would select and mark groups of characters on your page. If it coincided with the master page, you won that day's pool. Perhaps the reason why peaka peow was so frowned upon was that it was run by people outside the social mainstream and in a totally foreign language.
Perhaps because of the connections with American mobsters in the early days, casino gambling never made it to Jamaica's shores. That form of gambling is still excluded, even though there has been an explosion of video gaming terminals. In fact, though, almost everywhere you go casino gambling has been removed from the clutches of organised crime. Instead, it is now a highly regulated business, in some cases run by governments themselves. The gaming commissions of Nevada and New Jersey, for example, are extremely scrupulous in policing the casinos of Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City, and authorities in other parts of the US where casinos have sprung up are equally zealous in policing those establishments.
About a quarter-century ago native groups in the US, and later in Canada, saw casinos as a way of digging themselves out from a state of perpetual poverty and backwardness, and casinos have sprung up on reservations and reserves all across the continent. Along with that we have witnessed the phenomenon of government-run lotteries. In the United States, 42 state governments and the District of Columbia have set up lotteries, either as part of a government department or as a stand-alone entity. These enterprises are extremely popular and provide significant pools of money to run various public projects in a country notoriously leery of taxes. In New York, for instance, the state lottery has raked in US$31 billion to support education since it was established in 1967.
The early American settlers used lotteries to finance a variety of projects, public and private. You will remember that one of the main triggers for the revolt against the British crown was the taxes imposed on the settlers without taking their concerns into account. Lotteries helped pay for the revolutionary war and the establishment of Harvard College. The tradition of using lotteries instead of taxes for public purposes continued until late in the 19th century, when corruption set in and public revulsion resulted in legislation prohibiting them.
North of the border, lotteries are a fixture of Canadian provincial governments, which are quite happy to sop up the money which some call a "stupidity tax" to support public works such as building sports arenas in small towns. In the rest of the Americas, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador have national lotteries, as do Australia and most of Europe. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa also have national lotteries.
The payouts from these publicly owned lotteries are huge - the biggest on record was US$390 million in the
MegaMillions lottery last March. It was won by one ticket-holder from New Jersey and another from Georgia. The big numbers are deceptive though - various taxes and levies can knock the total down by two-thirds, as US laws regard windfall winnings as personal income, which is deducted at source. Europe's largest payout was euro180 million, awarded to two ticket-holders in France and one in Portugal in February 2006. The biggest individual winner was Dolores McNamara of Ireland, who picked up euro115 million in July 2005.
Curiously, most forms of gambling were illegal in most countries a century ago, and remained that way until about World War II, but didn't gain general acceptance until a couple of decades later. But gambling is one of the oldest pastimes of human beings, and gained traction with the development of money as a means of assigning value to performing work and the goods that work produced. The first signs of gambling, or casting lots, were evident in China during the Han dynasty, in the second century BC. In his landmark saga, the Iliad, Homer talks about lots being placed in Agamemnon's helmet to determine who would battle Hector.
Human beings being what they are, gambling - along with the doubts and distrust - will always be with us, like all the dualities which make up the delightful paradox of humanity. It's perhaps best summed up in the words of Henry Fielding, an English novelist of the early 18th century:
"A lottery is a taxation
Upon all the fools in creation.
And heaven be praised
It is easily raised,
Credulity's always in fashion."
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca
Keeble McFarlane
Saturday, January 19, 2008
"If you don't have a ticket, you don't have a chance!" was the slogan central to a popular sweepstake promotion many of us remember from the 1950s and 60s. A five-shilling sweepstake ticket could yield a prize of £20,000, a not inconsiderable sum which allowed the winner to start a business or build a house. (For the members of the dollar generation, a pound contained 20 shillings.) In those days a pound was worth US$2.80, and prices for most commodities were relatively low, so you can see the attraction sweepstakes had for many people. It was legal, although frowned upon in genteel circles, to buy various forms of lottery, including raffles, sweepstakes, English football pools and betting on horse races, either at the track or through off-track agents. The conservative churches deemed any form of gambling as a sin, but the Roman Catholic church interpreted things differently, and ran raffles to raise money for its various community outreach programmes.
One form of gambling which received the constant attention of the police was the one favoured most by the poor (and which had the smallest payouts). Peaka peow, which was operated by some Chinese entrepreneurs, used the simple formula of a page of perhaps 10 lines and 15 or so columns of Chinese characters printed at random. The person performing the day's settings would select two or three groups of characters which, when put together, would mean something, and mark them accordingly. When you bought a ticket, you would select and mark groups of characters on your page. If it coincided with the master page, you won that day's pool. Perhaps the reason why peaka peow was so frowned upon was that it was run by people outside the social mainstream and in a totally foreign language.
Perhaps because of the connections with American mobsters in the early days, casino gambling never made it to Jamaica's shores. That form of gambling is still excluded, even though there has been an explosion of video gaming terminals. In fact, though, almost everywhere you go casino gambling has been removed from the clutches of organised crime. Instead, it is now a highly regulated business, in some cases run by governments themselves. The gaming commissions of Nevada and New Jersey, for example, are extremely scrupulous in policing the casinos of Las Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City, and authorities in other parts of the US where casinos have sprung up are equally zealous in policing those establishments.
About a quarter-century ago native groups in the US, and later in Canada, saw casinos as a way of digging themselves out from a state of perpetual poverty and backwardness, and casinos have sprung up on reservations and reserves all across the continent. Along with that we have witnessed the phenomenon of government-run lotteries. In the United States, 42 state governments and the District of Columbia have set up lotteries, either as part of a government department or as a stand-alone entity. These enterprises are extremely popular and provide significant pools of money to run various public projects in a country notoriously leery of taxes. In New York, for instance, the state lottery has raked in US$31 billion to support education since it was established in 1967.
The early American settlers used lotteries to finance a variety of projects, public and private. You will remember that one of the main triggers for the revolt against the British crown was the taxes imposed on the settlers without taking their concerns into account. Lotteries helped pay for the revolutionary war and the establishment of Harvard College. The tradition of using lotteries instead of taxes for public purposes continued until late in the 19th century, when corruption set in and public revulsion resulted in legislation prohibiting them.
North of the border, lotteries are a fixture of Canadian provincial governments, which are quite happy to sop up the money which some call a "stupidity tax" to support public works such as building sports arenas in small towns. In the rest of the Americas, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador have national lotteries, as do Australia and most of Europe. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa also have national lotteries.
The payouts from these publicly owned lotteries are huge - the biggest on record was US$390 million in the
MegaMillions lottery last March. It was won by one ticket-holder from New Jersey and another from Georgia. The big numbers are deceptive though - various taxes and levies can knock the total down by two-thirds, as US laws regard windfall winnings as personal income, which is deducted at source. Europe's largest payout was euro180 million, awarded to two ticket-holders in France and one in Portugal in February 2006. The biggest individual winner was Dolores McNamara of Ireland, who picked up euro115 million in July 2005.
Curiously, most forms of gambling were illegal in most countries a century ago, and remained that way until about World War II, but didn't gain general acceptance until a couple of decades later. But gambling is one of the oldest pastimes of human beings, and gained traction with the development of money as a means of assigning value to performing work and the goods that work produced. The first signs of gambling, or casting lots, were evident in China during the Han dynasty, in the second century BC. In his landmark saga, the Iliad, Homer talks about lots being placed in Agamemnon's helmet to determine who would battle Hector.
Human beings being what they are, gambling - along with the doubts and distrust - will always be with us, like all the dualities which make up the delightful paradox of humanity. It's perhaps best summed up in the words of Henry Fielding, an English novelist of the early 18th century:
"A lottery is a taxation
Upon all the fools in creation.
And heaven be praised
It is easily raised,
Credulity's always in fashion."
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca