Residents of Pennsylvania, your government is at it again. ‘Tis the season. It’s Christmas time, and that means your government is again using your money to promote a scheme that gives false hope. It’s engaging yet again in its seasonal scheme to take money from millions without giving them anything in return.

I’m speaking of the lottery. And what’s the Christmas slogan this time? Take a look at the promotional billboards posted by the Pennsylvania Lottery with your tax dollars: “Win Big, Be Merry.”

Except for the fact that you won’t. You won’t win big, and you won’t be merry — or at least not the vast majority throwing away hard-earned money on lottery tickets. The thing is set up to ensure that. To ensure more losers than winners. To ensure that most participants are not merry.

The slogan is a lie, paid for by you, brought courtesy of your government, namely the commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Revenue. They do it every year.

It’s worth pausing for a moment for a brief civics exercise.

What is the purpose of government?

Of course, our founding documents had much insight into that question.

The Declaration of Independence states that to “secure” the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The U.S. Constitution endeavors to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Our founders engaged in weighty reflections on governance. “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” observed James Madison, father of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist no. 51.

Since then, one could invoke opinions of everyone from Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan, of conservatives and progressives and libertarians. But I hazard to say — and I hope — that most Americans, from left to right, would assert that it isn’t the purpose of government to give you nothing from what it takes from you.

But with the lottery, that’s precisely the purpose. That’s the whole scheme. Worse, it’s done disproportionately to the poor who can’t afford to blow money on the false promise of lottery tickets.

Once upon a time in America, gambling was considered a vice, which the government made illegal. But that changed when government realized how profitable this racket could be for itself. Once the operation of gangsters like Al Capone, it became the possession of Uncle Sam. Government not only stopped denouncing gambling but embraced it; nationalized it. It seized the “numbers racket.” To make this move sound downright noble, it vowed to use a portion of proceeds to fund programs to “help the elderly.”

So now, government runs the job, rather than the mob. And it’s happy to orchestrate the ripoff. Of course, if any company in the private sector made gazillions separating you from your money (especially the poor), every liberal in every legislature would demand hearings, regulations, fines and putting the perpetrators on trial. The company would be shut down.

But when government plays along, it’s another ball game. Win big, be merry!

It’s hard to think of a more dubious gift. But alas, year after year, that’s what your government gives you at Christmas time.

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