The Incredible Absurdity of How We Award Lottery Jackpots
You’ve probably heard that Mega Millions has a billion-dollar jackpot as of the end of July 2022. Do you have your ticket yet? (I do!) We’ve all heard the old joke that a lottery is a tax on people who aren’t good at math. That may be true, so let’s see if we can help some of these folks out.
I won’t belabor the point I made in the title for this post, so let’s just consider this chart:
Given that a lot of folks who buy lottery tickets could actually use the money, consider that instead of creating another billionaire, we could help out 100,000 people with $10,000. They could use it to pay down debt, for college tuition, to buy a new (used) car or to pay next month’s rent. Then consider that in most cases we are helping out 100,000 families not just 100,000 individuals.
One study found that the highest rate of lottery gambling was among those in the lowest fifth of socio-economic groups. (61% of that group buys tickets.) A NY Times article (from 2010) said “Some estimates suggest that more than 80 percent of lottery revenue comes from households making less than $50,000 a year — the very people who have the hardest time saving…
