The people of Taiwan are immersed in lottery madness these days. Such euphoria can be seen everywhere and the phenomenon is reflected in the skyrocketing number of lottery tickets sold throughout the nation. The jackpot for the grand prize reached NT$136 million in only the first week of sales, marking a new high for lottery prizes in Taiwan. In this wave of lottery madness, however, we should not forget the original intent of the lottery and we should also consider its future development.
The Public Welfare Lottery (
According to Article 3 of the "Public Welfare Lottery Supervision Committee Regulations" (公益彩券監理委員會組成辦法), proposed by the Ministry of Finance, lottery profits are to be distributed as follows:
First, about 35 percent of lottery proceeds go to local governments. Half of those funds are used for social welfare and charity causes. About 45 percent of the funds are used for the National Pension Program (
Second, 15 percent of the lottery revenues that go to the government are supposed to be evenly divided among local-level governments. The remaining 85 percent of those revenues are to be allocated to the local governments according to the population and lottery sales of each city or county.
Let us put aside for the time being whether the above distribution is able to solve the financial problems of local governments. We must have the following understanding of the matter:
First, lottery profits are unstable. The tremendous ticket sales in the first week do not guarantee a large profit in the future. In times of plenty all of us are happy because there is enough candy for everyone. In bad times, however, will everyone scramble for the profit as a crowding-out effect occurs?
Second, the distribution policy -- developed by a finance ministry committee -- is just an administrative order, not a law. Hence, the policy is flexible and it will be easy for the finance ministry to change the allocation since sufficient supervision is still lacking.
We must handle lottery profits wisely -- so that the money will not be used by local government chiefs to secure votes or to secretly exchange profits with others.
Since the central government is the authority on the lottery, all social welfare and charity programs sponsored by lottery funds should be directly assigned by the central government -- rather than local governments -- in order to earmark the money for specified purposes only. By doing this, necessary programs will not be sacrificed due to the possible crowding-out effect triggered by unstable lottery profits, and the promotion of public welfare can truly be achieved.
Moreover, we must regulate the distribution of lottery profits. The budget for social welfare is usually cut once the government runs into financial difficulty. Today, the finance ministry is in charge of distribution. The public is unable to judge the priority of the social welfare, national pension and national health insurance programs. If the distribution is not regulated, it may lead to large-scale political struggles and other problems once lottery profits shrink in the future. As a result, the best thing we can do is regulate the distribution of funds in an effort to maintain the scale of the nation's social welfare programs once financial hardship occurs.
At a time when local governments are complaining about their poor financial situation and when public welfare is repeatedly sacrificed, the lottery serves as a "rhapsody" not only for the people but also for the government. It can raise huge amount of money, which is why we should be more careful in handling these funds in order to help those in need.
Yu Jan-daw is a DPP legislator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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