Lottery winnings can fund the deficit

FIRST AMENDMENT VIOLATION ALERT!!!! CALL OUT THE CONSTITUTIONAL POLICE!!! "believers" of various faiths hold their religions prohibit gambling. The First Amendment says the government shall not do 2 things: establish a religion OR prohibit the free exercise of religion. In a discussion I am working on now, I'll address what that means (since Obamacare violates it). But in this instance--by mandating participation in a national lottery, the government would, in essence, be mandating that those individuals NOT exercise their religious choice--it would be forcing them to "sin" by the tenets of their religion. That being said--I am all in favor of a national lottery--government gets 75%, players get 25%--TAX FREE of course--totally voluntary, play as much as you want (or as little). Cost--1.00 Prizes--10 top prizes, equaling 50% of the winnings pool, the rest divided into smaller prizes. For instance-- a given national lottery winning pool is 500 million dollars in prize money. 10 people would win 25 million each, the remaining 250 million would be spread over smaller prizes according to the established odds--say another 100 people would win 2.5 million, another 1000 people would win 250,000 and so on--so you'd have a decent chance of at least getting your buck back, so to speak. In this particular national lottery drawing, the government would have collected, in total, 2 Billion dollars, and got to keep 1.5 billion of it. To keep congress from getting their greedy paws on it, you'd need some rules: The money would have to go directly to buying back treasury bonds and bills--including those held by social security. Once we ran out of debt to buy back, the money would have to be split 50/50--50% to buy gold and silver, 50% to fund government operating costs. You would tie the national lottery, in a perfect world, to the abolishment of the current tax system, in it's entirely, and institution of a national sales tax. Don't tax income-- tax consumption. Every time someone pays for ANYTHING--they pay a small tax. No more IRS. No more paperwork. No loopholes. If EVERYTHING were taxed, then EVERYONE would be paying--based on their spending habits, and there would be no more 47%, so to speak. Plenty of incentive to save, in this perfect monetary system--but even the best of savers would still be supporting the system, because there is no total self sufficiency-- everyone needs utilities, or land, or medical care, sooner or later. So there would be plenty of money to pay the bills, and as we built our gold and silver reserves back up we could transition back to the gold standard--no more fiat currency. Of course we would still sell bonds and bills--why not? BUT--while they would be BACKED by gold, they would be PAID in dollars. I'm liking this idea

News Flash Lotteries were started by the States to fund Education, Reduce Property taxes, Balance the budget, and in general help the state pay for existing services. Guess what the money is being spend on new programs and pet projects. If you start a lottery for deficit reduction it would work for the first year then the politicians would find other places to spend it or borrow more money. We have to control spending and not increase taxes or lottery gimmicks.

The 500million lottery that was just won, would only fund the US government for 80 minutes... The government is not allowed to FORCE US TO DO ANYTHING!!! That is what is wrong now...

Boy, that's a great idea!! Keep the price for the ticket at $1 and the top prize is a million or two and each drawing would bring in millions. I think it's a great idea. The only problem is that Congress would quickly highjack it and spend everything it takes in and then more. This is a good example of creative thinking. I wish we had some creative thinkers in D.C.

I can understand that you may belong to the numbers that does not like to pay taxes but as a citizen of you country, I think you have an obligation to observe the country's bylaws and pay the taxes accordingly. Hence, we should not feel being forced especially when these taxes goes a long way in supporting the country's "maintenance". In your theory, I hope that you could remember that the national lottery is a privately operated entity where the government does not have any involvement and as such is unfit to be fully trusted as far as compliance is concern when we appoint them to manage the mandatory deposit of our money in their establishment while we wait for a winning and pay the (our) taxes in the process. Besides, how many winners are there in each draw? Do you think that the numbers could actually support the entire country's requirements? Let's not forget that there are a certain percentage who for some reasons find buying lottery to be offensive or contrary to their beliefs, code of conduct or morals - one of it I believe is religion. With this, I think you will need to consider the possibilities of people hiding under this umbrella to "evade" paying taxes. So, I have to disagree with you as I could not find this to be a solution and implementing this will only create more problems in the future.

Hi friend, your idea is really unique and good, if this system is implemented every one will be happy and spend a little amount to check their luck

Would you require wealthy folks to buy more tickets? Then they would have more chances to win.. I don't know how you would balance it out. With taxation it's figured via percentage. Loopholes are favors returned for donating campaign money which is not at all as it should be.

i think it wouldn't work because taxes are higher than the general amount of lottery tickets especially if related to the private or business cases...anyway if somebody propose to test a method like that i agree in many cases taxes are too high for almost all the people in all countries!!

Well of course it can't work -- it would be too simple! Plus someone else might profit off of it and the people would not be taxed into submission. how would the government be able to control us then?

I not like to purchase the lottery because I know never win and this is not in my fortune without hard work earning money. Last year I invest my money in share of Reliance power. Lost 10000 rs. because share fall down 270 to 100. I not like this share or lottery.