as little as one quarter of one percent would raise the same amount. Lotteries are not only less efficient than taxes, they are less fair. The poor spend a larger proportion of their income on such games of chance than do the well off. Finally, the hope that legalized gambling would hurt orga- nized crime has proved to be an illusion.
Above all, Kaplan is critical of state governments that encourage their citizens to hinge "their aspirations for better lives on the ephem- eral possibility...