Suppose you win big in a state-sponsored lottery. The money was extracted via false advertising from ignorant rubes and is being transferred by a chance mechanism to one who has done nothing to deserve it. Besides, you are complicit in the state-sponsorship of gambling, which is clearly wrong. The state-sponsorship, not the gambling. There is nothing wrong with gambling, any more than there is anything wrong with consuming alcoholic beverages. But just as the state should not promote the consumption of alcohol or tobacco products, it should not promote gambling via lotteries. If you don't see that instantly, then I pronounce you morally obtuse -- or a liberal, which may come to the same thing.
Primum non nocere. A good maxim for states as well as sawbones. "First do no harm."
So a case can be made that lottery winnings are ill-gotten gains.
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