There’s a lot of talk these days about the dangers of playing state lotteries. These games are a type of hidden tax on the poor and middle class that eats up nearly 9 percent of the take home income of those who make less than $13,000 a year. State governments also get a sizable cut of the profits from these games thanks to state-sponsored advertisements. The only good thing about these games is that they bring in a large sum of money for the state.

There are some concerns about how lottery money is spent. Some states put a portion of the money into gambling addiction programs. Other states simply place the money into the general fund and spend it as it sees fit. Others, like North Carolina, earmark a certain percentage of lottery proceeds to education. However, there’s no way to track exactly what happens with the money, so it’s difficult to know whether lottery funds are actually boosting education funding.

While state lotteries can be a great source of revenue for a state, there are problems with how they are run. In the United States, state lotteries are subsidized by corporate income taxes. In fiscal 2015, state lotteries generated $66 billion in gross revenue – more than double what they got from corporate income taxes. These profits go to programs that would not have been possible without the lottery. In addition, state lotteries spend more than four billion dollars on prizes, advertising, and administration. And in the end, they only receive $21.4 billion in net revenue.