Needed: The Lifestyle Lottery
Instead of lotteries that award pure cash to winners (who sometimes blow the money and wind up back where they were), there should be at least the option for a kind of lottery that would put the winner into a certain lifetsyle, guaranteed, for the rest of his/her life. Or, in case that lifestyle proved tiring, perhaps s/he could have a few options to switch into something else.
So, for example, a winner in the Celebrity Lifestyle Lottery would be given a lovely place to live in a celebrity location (e.g., Malibu, Central Park West, Maui), a celebrity-style chauffeur, annual admission to the Academy Awards, etc., along with a nice weekly allowance. A winner in the Political Lifestyle Lottery would be introduced to the President and the First Lady, among others, and would be admitted to legislative and judicial hearings and conferences, political TV shows, and so forth.
This sort of thing could probably be provided for relatively low cost. It would probably be more glamorous, and might also be more humane, in at least some cases, than the present form of lottery.
