It’s no secret that the Virgin Islands government has been cash-strapped recently.
Though leaders deny that the public coffers are empty, bills are mounting rapidly from initiatives such as National Health Insurance and the Tortola Pier Park.
In response, some misguided residents have been insisting that government should diversify the economy, trim public spending, and make better financial decisions.
I’m sure you’ll agree that these ideas are ludicrous.
But that’s okay, because I have the perfect solution: The government should hold a raffle.
Yes, I know it’s strange that no one has thought of this already. The idea came to me last week when I noticed that yet another non-profit organisation had announced plans to raffle off a car.
In the past, such fundraisers were few and far between in the territory, but in recent months they have proliferated rapidly. These days, you can enter to win anything from a scooter to a Mercedes by buying a ticket that costs as little as $1 or as much as $200.
Since such schemes are apparently lucrative, I see no reason why the government shouldn’t get in on the action.
Crunching the numbers
At first, I thought that government should raffle off a car as well. Then I did the math.
The raffles work, I assume, by selling enough tickets to cover the cost of the vehicle and also make a profit.
But even if government raffled off the premier’s Cadillac SUV by selling 1,000 tickets at $200 each, it wouldn’t clear much more than $100,000 profit. That’s not even enough to pay one legislator’s salary!
So I considered fancier vehicles.
The most expensive car ever auctioned was a 1962 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta Speciale, which set a world record by bringing in more than $34 million.
If government raffled off a car like that, I reasoned, it could earn maybe $30 million or so.
That’s a lot of money for people like you and me, but in government’s hands it probably wouldn’t stretch beyond a couple temporary retaining walls and a few petty contracts for sewerage work that wouldn’t actually get done.
It would hardly solve government’s larger financial woes, considering that health care now costs government more than $40 million per year, the Tortola Pier Park loan is coming due, and the new airport is sure to run way over its projected cost of around $150 million.
Another option
Thus, I reasoned that government needs to raffle off something besides a car. Something bigger.
I considered various options. A mansion? A solid gold ingot? A day as premier? The House of Assembly? U.P.’s Cineplex?
Then it hit me: The Virgin Islands is the sailing capital of the world, and who doesn’t want a megayacht?
These giant boats routinely sell for more than $300 million, which is equivalent to government’s annual budget.
By selling a million tickets for the bargain price of $600 apiece each year, government could pay for a megayacht and have enough left over to double its annual revenue.
And that’s probably about what it will need.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking: Who would buy all of those tickets? The answer is: plenty of people — if they don’t have a choice.
Consider this: Leaders have promised to bring in at least one million cruise ship passengers annually within the next few years.
I can guarantee that each one of those passengers has access to at least $600. I can also guarantee that the vast majority of them want to go back home at some point.
So all government has to do is require them to buy a raffle ticket before allowing them to return to their ship. Problem solved!
Worst-case fallback
And if for any reason this scheme doesn’t work out, government would be under no obligation to purchase the yacht until it sold a million tickets.
In the worst-case scenario, the raffle could drag on for years, bringing in a steady trickle of revenue until everyone forgot about it — much like the other revenue-generating schemes that government has announced in recent years.
Meanwhile, there’s no rule that government can hold only one raffle at a time. So as the megayacht contest cranks up, leaders might also consider launching side raffles as well.
For easy money, the government could even raffle off things that it already owns: say, the Central Administration Building, which has become a money drain anyway.
Who wouldn’t pay $10 for a chance to win that prize?
Disclaimer: Dateline: Paradise is a column and occasionally contains satirical “news” articles that are entirely fictional.
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