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Or have they? Lottery money comes largely from the poor. A 1994 Atlanta Constitution study showed that Georgians living in ZIP codes with an average per capita income of under $20,000 spent 2 1/2 times as much on tickets than residents of ZIP codes where per capita income topped $40,000. And in Alabama and South Carolina, a lottery would come on top of tax structures that already place much of the financial burden on the poor. Alabama, for instance, taxes the sale of food and clothing; its state income tax applies to people making as little as $4,200 a year, and its property tax, which falls disproportionately on the wealthy, is the lowest in the country.
Then there is the HOPE scholarship. HOPE is not means-tested for the rich: no child can be the denied the scholarship because her family has the money to pay for college. But it is, de facto, means-tested for the poor. Because the state doesn't want to spend money on kids whom Washington could be paying for, Georgia high school graduates who want HOPE scholarships must first apply for federal need-based programs like Pell Grants. And whatever they get from the feds is deducted from their HOPE scholarship. So a poor student whose tuition is covered by federal aid gets a maximum of $150 a year from HOPE for books. That is part of the reason HOPE recipients come from families almost 40% wealthier than the state average.
A few local academics and editorial boards are raising questions about the path Miller, Siegelman and Hodges have taken. "It's an incredible betrayal of the Democratic Party if they claim to believe in social equity and fairness," says John Hill of the Alabama Family Alliance, a nonprofit think tank. But right now, the South's jubilant Democrats are in no mood to listen to naysayers. As for Carville, he admits to being a bit bothered at what he has wrought, saying the lottery is "not a place where I'd want to go to spend my money." Wilkinson's former pollster Mark Mellman is bothered too. Asked about criticism of the lottery, he replied, "Thank God I don't do public policy."