Vacation travel is down all over the world. More and more conventions are happening closer to corporate headquarters. In these hard economic times it’s a a city like Las Vegas that may be more susceptible to these king of cutbacks. As the city has been built on the these two very important trends. That of vacationers and convention goers.
In the last 10 years Las Vegas as a whole has made a big push to diversify their community so that the main source of revenue coming into the city is not all gambling. Well now that strategy albeit a sound one is actually hurting the Las Vegas economy more this time around. As now there are more businesses by way of hotels and restaurants and other businesses that rely on the non gamblers. All those family vacationers and convention goers that don’t gamble but spend their money in other ways around the city. Those smaller businesses are taking a big hit during this economic downturn.
Is It Time For A National Lottery
Well as of January 2009 you will be able to add another state to the growing list of Powerball lottery members. Powerball which has steadily become the largest interstate lottery in the country will be able to count 32 states as members in their lottery.
This begs the question to be asked when you look at the relatively short history of interstate lotteries. Why do we not have a national lottery at this point? Consider the short history of Powerball the most popular game in the US. Powerball only started their official drawings back on April 22, 1992 and since then in a relatively short 17 years has grown to expand to as of January 2009 when Florida joins will be up to 32 states. Presently there are only 7 states left in the union that do not have any state run lottery at all.
There are presently 3 organizations around the world that are actually working on putting together a world lottery. With so much popularity for the lottery games all over the world and the obvious lienency that is given to lotteries in comparison to full on gambling which is much more regulated around the world. It’s a wonder why there has not been a national lottery put into place.
Especially when you consider that most state run lotteries contribute a very large portion of the money generated by these state run lotteries back into the state for education programs or other government run programs. Seriously I would think that the US government which is 10 trillion dollars in debt by the way would be a little more open to any program that has the money generating potential as a national lottery. Would be shall we say more inclined to finding more ways to bring in some extra money other than taxes. I mean think about the kind of money the US government could generate from a national lottery the millions of people would voluntarily give millions of dollars to probably every time the did a drawing. Come on congressman, senators and potential new president time to start thinking outside the box!
What do you think? Is it time for the US to put together a national lottery to help us out of the mounting financial woes that are in the trillions of dollars at this point. Please share your opinions with a few comments and thanks for reading!