The Pennsylvania Lottery
If you live in PA, you’ve seen this commercial around the holidays. The man who says, “what a great gift” is part of an excellent brain washing program. The entire marketing campaign should be viewed as a benchmark for top level consumer programming.
The PA lottery piece comes off as a wholesome, holiday oriented marketing production instead of the blood sucking parasite that it is. I could write the same line about casinos but they at least advertise fun instead of “a great gift”. We all know that the lottery “benefits older Pennsylvanians”, however, did you know that in 2018-2019 they sold $4.5 BILLION dollars of games which generated a record profit of $1.14 billion. For comparison, the entire casino industry in PA made $3.25 billion in 2018. The lottery is not a small time, family oriented affair.
This brings me to why I care. People don’t look at the lottery as a business. It’s looked at as a way for “the people” to get lucky wealthy when in fact it sucks the money from our wallets. Who monitors how the lottery benefits older Pennsylvanians? What do they do with that $1 billion dollars which doesn’t need to be taxed because they are the people who tax you! I’m also not doing a lottery expose so it’s quite possible the lottery is actually a wholesome operation as represented below. This is what the money has done:
Since the very first ticket was sold in 1972, the Pennsylvania Lottery has contributed more than $30 billion to benefit programs that include property tax and rent rebates; free and reduced-fare transportation services; the low-cost prescription programs PACE and PACENET; care services; and local services provided by the 52 Area Agencies on Aging.
For me though, I’m tried of trusting. The people are being lied to on a regular basis and we take it because it’s disguised. You can disagree with that last sentence but I’d say you’re being naïve. This tweet comes from how I believe the world is working.
It’s hard to go through life not trusting anyone, but to act like the state acts in your best interest with commercials like the lottery is foolhardy.
Here is the same commercial from 1994 which gives you an idea of how successful this pitch is. Hardly needs to be edited in 25 years. Probably longer.
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