The three main goals for establishing a computerized lottery system are to satisfy the middle and lower classes' dreams of wealth, create employment for the handicapped and eliminate the national budget deficit. The government's main concern is, of course, the third item.
With frequent elections, opposition and ruling parties are issuing blank checks like their lives depended on it in order to get more votes. Apart from major public construction projects, high-expenditure social welfare measures are created, one after the other. Structural deficits often occur in the national budget, a trend that is on the increase.
What happens if revenues don't meet expenditures? The solution is to increase revenues and cut expenditures, but in order to curry favor with voters, there is no way expenditures can be cut. How to increase revenue has therefore become a thorny issue for the Ministry of Finance. There are three ways to do so:
First, by increasing taxes across the board. This will incense the public, something the ruling party dares not risk.
Second, putting the knife to the necks of the wealthy, cracking down on tax evasion and strictly reviewing tax exemption and tax reduction requirements. The problem is that it is easy to discover tax evasion among wage earners, while it's difficult to prevent tax evasion on profits, interest and land lease income.
If it wasn't for politicians exposing the skeletons in rival's closets, it would probably prove difficult beyond description for the public to find information about tax evasion among officials and businessmen. In particular, with the economy taking the lead (sidestepping fairness and justness), the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Council for Economic Planning and Development often support the employers' viewpoint, demanding the finance ministry relax the conditions for tax exemption or tax reduction.
This leaves only the third option for increasing revenues, and that is to take from the poor to save the rich, ie, making the middle and lower classes pay up. A lottery is a tax following the law of least resistance. Even though the probability of winning is near zero, everyone harbors hopes -- so no one feels that they have been taxed.
One major reason why "the lottery for the public good" is "good" is that it creates employment for the handicapped. What the handicapped need most, however, is not the right to sell lottery tickets, but equal rights to education and educational environments, easily accessible public spaces, and an unprejudiced employment situation. This is the direction in which the government should direct its efforts, and also would yield the greatest good for the handicapped.
A TV ad for the lottery in California used to say that "it takes 10 years to grow a tree, but 100 years to bring up a generation of good men." The ad encouraged people to buy lottery tickets since 3 percent of the income would go to educational expenditures. The ad was successful, as it captured the importance people place on education.
The problem is that the lion's share of the income from California's lottery went to non-educational purposes, something that the ad did not mention. It is obvious that the uneducated who believed that they could support education by buying a lottery ticket were cheated -- the ad was simply trying to "pass fish eyes off as pearls" as the old Chinese saying goes -- and the government of California was the main schemer behind the plot. It was really tragic.
Lotteries are unfair and unjust, in Taiwan as well as abroad.
Lin Ching-yuan is an associate professor in the economics department of Tamkang University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
China has successfully held its Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, with 53 of 55 countries from the African Union (AU) participating. The two countries that did not participate were Eswatini and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which have no diplomatic relations with China. Twenty-four leaders were reported to have participated. Despite African countries complaining about summit fatigue, with recent summits held with Russia, Italy, South Korea, the US and Indonesia, as well as Japan next month, they still turned up in large numbers in Beijing. China’s ability to attract most of the African leaders to a summit demonstrates that it is still being
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Thursday was handcuffed and escorted by police to the Taipei Detention Center, after the Taipei District Court ordered that he be detained and held incommunicado for suspected corruption during his tenure as Taipei mayor. The ruling reversed an earlier decision by the same court on Monday last week that ordered Ko’s release without bail. That decision was appealed by prosecutors on Wednesday, leading the High Court to conclude that Ko had been “actively involved” in the alleged corruption and it ordered the district court to hold a second detention hearing. Video clips
The Russian city of Vladivostok lies approximately 45km from the Sino-Russian border on the Sea of Japan. The area was not always Russian territory: It was once the site of a Chinese settlement. The settlement would later be known as Yongmingcheng (永明城), the “city of eternal light,” during the Yuan Dynasty. That light was extinguished in 1858 when a large area of land was ceded by the Qing Dynasty to the Russian Empire with the signing of the Treaty of Aigun. The People’s Republic of China founded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has never ruled Taiwan. Taiwan was governed by the
The Japanese-language Nikkei Shimbun on Friday published a full-page story calling for Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) leadership hopefuls to be aware of and to prepare for a potential crisis in the Taiwan Strait. The candidates of the LDP leadership race must have a “vision” in case of a Chinese invasion in Taiwan, the article said, adding that whether the prospective president of the LDP and the future prime minister of Japan have the ability to lead the public and private sectors under this circumstance would be examined in the coming election. The “2027 Theory” of a Taiwan contingency is becoming increasingly
RSS