[conciliatory]

It’s honestly shocking how many facets of American culture are predicated on addiction for profit. Alcohol, food, social media, gaming, opioids, cannabis, nicotine, gambling. It is extraordinarily difficult to find a sense of perspective independent of the influence of these industries.

[landemva]

> Alcohol, food, social media, gaming, opioids, cannabis, nicotine, gambling

and wars.

Hmmm, what demographic frequently buys lottery tickets? How much overlap with demographic of enlisted Army recruits?

I suppose lottery and Army is better than prison.

[bogomipz]

It's pretty amazing how the states are in the business of:

booze, tobacco, weed, gambling and gas

Imagine what the total revenue from just those 5 things is? It's got to be like printing cash and yet in most states and cities across the US have crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, underfunded pensions and budget deficits. This is in addition to all their other more regular tax regimes. Where does the money go?

[Rury]

It's not as much as you'd think. For Illinois, lottery alone nets something like $3 billion, of which ~$700-750 million goes to funding public schools. Public schools expenditures are ~$35 Billion/year. So, less than 1/35th of costs. Add in the alcohol, tobacco, weed, gambling taxes, and you still not even close to covering half the state's school expenditures.

Granted, Illinois is perhaps the most fiscally screwed state, so might not be best example...

[bogomipz]

>"Public schools expenditures are ~$35 Billion/year."

That all appears way off.

"This year, the governor plans to increase the state’s education general fund by $498.1 million — a 5.4% increase — for an overall budget of $9.7 billion."[1]

Additionally the Illinois state gas tax which is the second highest in the US is 40 cents a gallon.[2][3]

[1] https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2022/2/2/22914634/pritzker-pro...

[2] https://www.axios.com/local/chicago/2022/03/22/illinois-gas-...

[3] https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-2nd-highest-gas-taxe...

[Rury]

That was just Pritzker's proposal for the state's portion of the elementary and secondary education general fund. There are other funds to account for, as well as the federal's contribution which are past proposal and have been enacted. Better source is to grab straight from Illinois.gov's site [1].

Look at: Fiscal Year 2022 Budget, Table I-A Operating and Capital (xls) - Cell J373 + Cell J438.

Total Elementary And Secondary Education = $27.7B. Total Higher education = $4.7B.

So ~$32.5B for FY22.

[1] https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/budget/Pages/BudgetBooks.asp...