Someone once said that the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
A big chunk of the money you spend on those Powerball tickets gets skimmed right off the top to pay for ‘education’ or whatever accounting shell-game tricks the participating state is doing. Then you pay the top marginal fed and state tax rate on the remaing winnings (over 50%), leaving an expected payout of 30% or less.
It is one of the worst expected payouts in all of legal gambling. In Vegas the expected payout for most games is 90% or better, and some games like Jacks-or-Better or Blackjack can routinely hit 99.5% better for optimal play.
The wags are right: Powerball is basically a tax on stupid people.
“...the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.”
Well, I’m already paying tens of thousands on taxes that I never get any direct benefit from - so I’m not going to worry about the $20 I wasted today.
I saw I had matched two of the white numbers from last Saturday’s drawing! In the correct order or columns or whatever. I guess if I show some matching numbers I’ll investigate more - but do the numbers have to be in the same sequence as the winning number? Or can you just match any numbers?
e.g.: 16 40 76 2 is the same as 40 16 2 76?