How Mega Millions and Powerball Make You a Loser

Nobody won last Friday’s Mega Millions lottery, so this week’s grand prize has grown to $1.6 billion dollars. That’s Billion, with a “B.” On Saturday, nobody won the Powerball lottery, so this week’s prize will be $620 million. These events are hardly surprising since both of these multi-state, government-sponsored gambling cartels recently tweaked the odds to produce such results.

Since the Mega Millions formula change, players now pick five numbers from 1 to 70 and a Mega number of 1 to 25. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are currently 1 in 292,201,338. The odds of being killed by a falling vending machine: 1 in 12,000,000.

Why did the lotteries ramp up the odds? If more people lose, the lottery prizes grow larger. When prizes grow, more people buy lottery tickets. When prizes are “only” $100 million, many lottery ticket buyers are the poor and desperate, but when prizes are huge, even wealthy people buy lottery tickets.When more people buy lottery tickets, the bigger the corporate profits for Mega Millions and Powerball. But selling more lottery tickets increases state school district budgets, right?

No. education budgets stay about the same. States merely use lottery profits to replace funding they previously got from other sources.

More:

“How Much Do Americans Spend on the Lottery?” Mike Brown, lendedu

“Per capita lottery spending has doubled since 1995,” Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post

“Why all lotteries are based on a lie,” Allison Schrager, Quartz

“Powerball Windfall? Schools Don’t Always Benefit From Lottery Sales,” Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News

“How ’80s excess fueled today’s Mega Millions mania,” Jonathan D. Cohen, Washington Post

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Americans Sell Off Stocks, Buy Lottery Tickets

It’s 2016. Wall Street is down, but lottery ticket sales are up. Wednesday’s Powerball grand prize is expected to be around $1.5 billion.

Powerball includes 44 state lotteries and those in DC, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Odds of winning: 1 in 292 million.

John Oliver Plays (With) the Lottery

Americans spent $68 billion playing the lottery last year, more than they spent on movie tickets, music, professional sports, video games and porn combined.. You can think of state lotteries as a tax on the dreams of the poor, since the poor spend more on these state-sponsored gambling schemes than more well-off people. Lottery ads sell hope, but the odds of winning are hopeless (1 in 176 million).

States sold the lottery concept to voters by saying the money earned would go to good causes like education, but it doesn’t, it merely displaces existing funding instead of supplementing it, so school budgets are flat or reduced.

Lottery winners are notoriously bad with their money. Hey, if they were good with money, would they play the freakin’ lottery in the first place?

John Oliver recently analyzed the lottery on his television program:

Low-Power Powerball

“Powerball at an estimated $600 million as jackpot continues to grow,” AP via Fox News

“Got THE ticket for tonight’s big Powerball drawing?,” CNN

Odds of winning: 1 in 175.2 million.

Odds of becoming president: 1 in 43,000,000.

Odds of being struck by lightning this year: 1 in 700,000.

The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math, according to Ambrose Bierce, but it’s worse than that. It’s a tax on the hopes and dreams of the poor. The only way lottery corporations get away with it is by giving a kickback to state governments, a small cut of their vast profits.

UPDATE:

“$590M-plus Powerball: 1 winning ticket sold in Florida,” Barbara Rodriguez, AP via Boston Globe

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Image (“Investment Portfolio of the Working American”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

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