Whether you’re looking for the winning numbers from last night or just want to find out how much you could win in this week’s Take5 lottery draw, you’ll find the official New York Lottery results here. The state’s lottery began in 1967 and since then has generated more than 34 billion dollars in revenue that is primarily used to support education. The money has also been spent on other projects such as the construction of New York City Hall and numerous roads, canals, and ferries.

At the time, Cohen writes, “politicians saw lotteries as budgetary miracles.” They could fill state coffers with hundreds of millions of dollars and avoid raising taxes for the common man—or so they claimed. This was a period when social safety nets had begun to collapse, as income disparity widened and pensions eroded. As a result, the American dream that hard work would lead to financial security had all but vanished for many working Americans.

But it’s important to keep in mind that, despite decades of brash advertising and heavy promotion, lottery revenues remain, on average, less than one percent of state spending each year. That might matter to the people who play, but it shouldn’t obscure the fact that lottery profits are a regressive tax that takes money from those who can least afford to part with it. And that, in turn, makes it harder to raise taxes when the need arises. That’s the real reason that state lotteries should be abolished.