Do you feel lucky? When Clint Eastwood asked this question on the big screen, a string of cash-strapped states were asking it of their residents, establishing the first publicly run lotteries in the United States in more than a century. Deindustrializing Northeastern states were under budgetary siege, caught between tax-resistant electorates and their own declining fortunes. They were fighting the mob and wanted to corner its winnings as well as its bosses. And they had ready customers; working-class Catholics fleeing to the suburbs were as eager to play the lottery as the Black urbanites they left behind. The states that pioneered this new wave of government gambling—New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts—were feeling lucky. Lotteries would make their day.
They did not. Despite the many innovations to come—scratch-off tickets, growing jackpots, multi-state mega-prizes—lotteries did not rescue Northeastern states from tough choices in the 1970s, make up for property tax...