I’m pretty sure I’ve been scammed before. I’m just too rich to notice.
Realistically, your chance of winning the jackpot is zero. Technically, it’s one in 175,711,536, or 0.000000569%. Which is statistically the same as zero. But it’s not psychologically the same as zero — and that’s what counts. When you buy your lottery ticket, it’s impossible not to dream of all the things which might happen if you won. (…)
By far the easiest way to funnel more of your income back to the government is to buy lottery tickets. It really is a voluntary tax. (…)
If you move from lottery tickets to scratch cards, something else happens — they pay out with enough predictability that they can actually be used for money laundering. Take your dirty dollars, buy a bunch of scratch cards, redeem the winners, and you’ve got nice clean legitimate money. If the games weren’t so incredibly lucrative for the states, they’d be made illegal in no time just for this reason alone.
