0
items
$0
I’ve been accused of being “Grumpy” about the lottery.
It’s not that I’m “Grumpy” at all. It’s that I want to respect you. I want to think you are smart and rational. That you are emotionally balanced and aren’t waiting for magic or superheros to save you from the world. But if you insist on doing something as stupid as playing the lottery…for fun…well, I’m not sure things can really work out between us. So maybe it’s just good to nip it in the bud.
If being rational makes me “grumpy”…so be it.
Here is why I feel the way I do:
Odds
The odds of winning Mega Millions at the time of this writing are 1 in 302,575,350
(I say “now” because they recently made it more difficult to win).
The odds of becoming a lightning victim (killed) in the U.S. in any one year is 1 in 700,000. Much better odds of just being hit.
*More odds below for all kinds of things that are more likely to happen than winning the lottery.
“Hey, you can't win if you don’t play! Am I right?”
True. But it’s such a grand fraud that I just can’t believe otherwise sensible people play. It’s a tax on people who don’t understand odds or math.
It’s a Scam. It’s fraud. It’s a lie.
No other thing runs like the lottery….and is so beloved by the simple-minded.
“It’s for Old people” - this is the biggest lie of it all. It plays on your heartstrings and makes you believe it’s for a good cause. Turns out, “old people” get between 1% - 10% of the money depending on the state. The rest goes to State slush funds. Slush funds go to corruption. You are funding corruption.
It’s run by the state, to protect us from “criminals” that might defraud us. - Sure. Yet, the state gives worse odds than most Bookies. And if you think the state doesn’t use violence to protect their self-given monopoly on gambling: try starting your own private lottery. You will have cops with guns all over you shit in days. The state is the mafia when it comes to gambling. No difference at all.
It’s a pig - It takes almost all the money for itself, starting with 60% right off the top - we investigate that more in the “garden” illustration below…
Pretend the lottery is a garden
Let’s treat the lottery as if you live on a deserted island, and instead of giving you money…we are talking about food.
The community owns the land on which the garden it planted, but one guy decides to put a fence around it one day, and says, “it’s for the good of the community. Without the fence, some people in the community might sneak in at night and steal some of the produce.” The community agrees to the fence.
Can I outsmart the Lottery?
This from my friend John Burd at a date much later than the date I started writing this blog post (12/29/24). in fact, when I started writing this article (February 19th, 2017), there was no “A.I.”):
I used some A.I. bots to calculate the jackpot break-even point for taking the lump sum payout of a Mega Millions ticket. The first bot I tried gave a result of $1.688B, exactly 2x what I calculated ($844B, and No I did not forget to account for each chance being $2.) The second bot came in close to my result but too far under to be correct. I asked each bot what it thought about the result the other bot gave, and the bot that was close to agreeing with me conceded defeat and agreed with the first bot at $1.63B. Yet I don't understand the discrepancy.
Welcome to the 21st century I guess.
Notes:
1/302.5M odds
adjust for the lump sum being less than the headline payout
$2 per chance
adjust for 37% fed taxes
adjust for state, local tax at 3.3%
Odds of other stuff
If you can look at all these other odds I listed here, and still think that playing the lottery is a good way to spend your money…well…I can’t put you in the “smart” category.
It’s a Tax on people who don’t understand odds or math.
Here are your Federal and State cuts on the back end. Plus the HUGE chunk they will take as a Cash option.
References:
Odds - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/scientists-calculate-odd-ways-die-282884
Mega taxes/payments - https://www.usamega.com/mega-millions-jackpot.asp
News investigative report: https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/where-pennsylvania-lottery-fund-money-really-goes/123006/
PA lottery says they earmark ¢.27 of “proceeds” to benefit older Pennsylvanians…after admin costs.