A lottery is a game in which numbers are drawn in order to choose winners. The numbers are chosen randomly by computer or manually. The winnings can be a large amount of money or various prizes. The concept of a lottery is widely used in many different situations such as filling vacancies in companies, choosing members of a sports team, or placing students in universities.

In the seventeenth century, colonial America relied heavily on lotteries to fund public works projects like paving streets, building wharves, and establishing schools. George Washington even sponsored a lottery to raise funds for a road project across the Blue Ridge Mountains. While these early lotteries were largely illegal, they were still popular and effective.

Lotteries continued to be an important source of revenue for state governments in the modern era as well, especially in states that provided generous social safety nets and found it difficult to balance their budget without raising taxes or cutting services. In the nineteen-sixties, however, growing awareness of all the money to be made in the gambling industry collided with a crisis in state funding caused by booming inflation and the costs of the Vietnam War.

The result was the birth of the modern state lottery. Lottery supporters argue that it is a great way to generate painless revenue for the public good, since players are voluntarily spending their money and do not have to pay a tax increase. Unfortunately, this argument is flawed in several ways.