As a high school math student, I recall being forced to learn about things called “imaginary numbers.” I wasn’t very impressed at the time. After all, it seems very convenient for mathematicians to make up numbers just to make their equations logical. If I were to add “imaginary numbers” just to make my math test turn out right, I’d get a zero. So I didn’t care for imaginary numbers back then, although my reasons were mainly academic. I still don’t care for imaginary numbers, though, and now I have real reasons.
Legislatures, including national, state and local, are quite fond of imaginary numbers, particularly when it comes to budgeting. Budgets themselves are quite often imaginary, relying on money that hasn’t been received and sometimes never is. Government budgets are often based on “projected” money, which is basically imaginary money. Sometimes governments have reason to expect such money, and sometimes they don’t.
This year, the North Carolina state budget is going to give new meaning to the term imaginary numbers. We all know already that the state is facing a financial crisis. Fiscal needs are exceeding revenues, partially because of lessening revenues and partially because of rising expenses, such as Medicaid. What this means is that the state legislature has an actual job to do this year. Rather than arguing over pet projects and other petty ways to spend money, they must discuss pet projects and other petty ways to avoid spending money. This won’t put any of our state elected officials in a good mood because it’s much more difficult to get oneself re-elected if one has been cutting funding to one’s constituents right and left, even if the cuts are absolutely necessary to the functioning of government.
Governor Mike Easley has started the craziness himself. He could have attempted to compile a budget that dealt with the new financial situation by finding programs that could be cut. Never one to take the simple route, Easley has decided to try out some “creative” budgeting. His budget plan for the year actually includes $250 million dollars in revenues from a state lottery. This would sound like a clear and logical idea, except for one tiny little thing. We don’t have a North Carolina state lottery, a fact that renders Easley’s budget a pile of incomprehensible and meaningless imaginary numbers.
Easley has apparently decided that his previously fruitless battle to start up a lottery makes more sense to pursue than a budget with actual facts and figures in it. Sadly, he’s probably right. It seems much more likely that the legislature will capitulate and begin the lottery, rather than try to make difficult and potentially painful decisions about funding various pet programs.
Easley and other proponents of the lottery are selling it as a way to “save” funding for education. Let’s do it for the children, they beg. Now, I’ll grant you that education requires money. And I think the recent decision made by CMS to reduce funding for elementary school bands and foreign language programs, which was prompted by the statewide budget crisis, is disgraceful. But what bothers me most about these cuts is that they’re being made to programs that actually affect children. Why not try to cut out all the wasteful programs and positions within our education system and other state government offices? Why not cut out programs and positions not directly related to the education of students, or offices not actually related to public service? That would be one immediate way to reduce funding without having a detrimental impact on children or on most other people (although it would mean the elimination of some nonessential jobs).
Ultimately, I have to question the purpose of these 250 million imaginary dollars anyway. Is this money really going to save education in the state?
Let’s play devil’s advocate and say that this money is integral and necessary in order for education as we know it to survive. Is the lottery really the way to come up with the cash? It’s true that we’re surrounded by states that have lotteries, and I’m sure North Carolina does lose a certain amount of revenue to neighboring states. But just because South Carolina is doing something certainly doesn’t mean that we should follow suit. If South Carolina jumped off a cliff, would we jump off, too? In other words, perhaps South Carolina isn’t the best state role model around.
I question the idea of a North Carolina state lottery for the same reasons I opposed having a lottery in South Carolina. A lottery is a voluntary tax imposed upon people willing to trade money for a slip of paper representing hope. While lots of people buy lottery tickets, people who spend much of their money on lottery tickets, causing harm to themselves and their families, tend to be poorer people. Most rich people didn’t get rich by purchasing lottery tickets, after all. So the lottery winds up preying on poor people, taking advantage of their lack of hope and faith in their abilities to better themselves. A state-sponsored lottery is, at its heart, a cynical idea. Why should the poor be paying for the education of the wealthy or even the middle class? It’s as though Robin Hood were in reverse and he was going around stealing money from the poor in order to finance the needs and whims of those already better off. I doubt we’d consider old Robin Hood much of a folk hero if that’s what he was doing. And even though Easley has pinned high political hopes on bringing the lottery to North Carolina, I’m not sure he’s going to receive folk hero status for his actions either.
Perhaps before we decide to adopt the lottery, we should perform a more careful examination of the lottery in surrounding states, particularly the human sources of lottery revenues. *
Lucy Perkins is a teacher at North Mecklenburg High School, and is the recipient of a Time Warner Star Teacher Award.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2002.
