Odds are that you aren’t going to be a billion dollars richer on Wednesday night. But you will have probably spent the equivalent of a tank of gas buying lottery tickets for the drawing. And as US Uncut’s Nathan Wellman previously reported, many of those lucky enough to overcome the nearly impossible odds end up broke and homeless.
Here are five ways the Powerball is screwing you and your state:
1. The lottery is designed to be impossible for anyone to win
The current odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 292 million. A clip John Oliver used for Last Week Tonight showed a man describing those odds as similar to getting struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark. As TIME reported, this is because states that run the Powerball lottery conspired to make the Powerball even more unwinnable last October by increasing the pool of possible winning numbers to 69, rather than 59. The previous odds were still insurmountable at 1 in 175 million.
2. Previous jackpots have been rigged
Don’t be so sure the quick-pick ticket you bought at the corner store might have the winning combination. Lottery officials have proven they have the technology and the systems in place to rig the numbers in their favor. The most recent proof can be seen in the case of Edward Tipton, former security director for the Multi-State Lottery Association, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for fraud last year.
As the Washington Post reported, Tipton programmed self-destructing software into lottery computers and bought the winning ticket for a $16.5 million Hot Lotto jackpot at a convenience store in Iowa in 2010, using a friend in Texas as a proxy to claim the winnings. He’s also accused of rigging lottery jackpots in Colorado and Wisconsin. After Tipton’s actions, his boss, Multi-State Lottery executive director Charles Strutt, was placed on administrative leave.
3. Very little of the prize money actually goes to education
Many states that operate lotteries claim that a portion of the prize money funds public education. However, as John Oliver pointed out, this claim, while true, doesn’t mean schools in lotto states get more funding — in many cases, having tax revenue from a state lottery gives the government of that state more leeway to move around tax dollars to suit politically-valuable constituencies:
If you don’t feel like watching the video, here’s a brief summary: In 21 of the 24 states that run a lottery, education spending is either stagnant or falling. Nevada, which is the undisputed capital of gambling in the United States, ranks dead last out of all 50 states and DC in education.
In North Carolina, which launched its lottery in 2005, the governor who approved the legislation announced that the Tar Heel State would see an additional $500 million go to the state’s public schools each year as a result of the lottery.
However, North Carolina legislators ended up shifting around the new revenue: In one instance, lottery money was used to bolster the school construction budget by $100 million. But as that revenue stream flowed in, corporate tax revenue for school construction was taken out and put back into the general fund.
The following year, state lawmakers announced a wave of new cuts in the state corporate tax rate. Essentially, the lottery tickets that largely low-income people buy to feed their dream of overcoming impossible odds to have economic security are now treated as taxes formerly paid by economically-secure corporations. Now, North Carolina corporate income taxes are at zero percent for some of the state’s most profitable corporations.
Speaking of taxes on the poor…
4. Lottery games are a tax on the poor
A 2012 report from Business Insider studied the trends of people who buy lotto tickets and came across some revealing information. On average, lottery ticket buyers lose 47 cents on the dollar for every ticket bought. Per capita lottery ticket sales are also the highest in poor counties, as those with next to no money are often the first to dream of escaping poverty by winning the lottery.
In South Carolina, even though households earning less than $40,000 in annual income made up just 28 percent of the population in 2012, they accounted for a 54 percent majority of lotto players. And out of all those who either play for money or play for fun (the alleged real reason), poor people said they played for money 25 percent more than other demographics.
Data from California showed that a disproportionate number of residents with lower education levels bought more lottery tickets. 49 percent of Californians with a high school diploma or less played in a given week in 2012, compared to less than 30 percent of those with a college degree. That might explain why a mathematically-incorrect meme that states that the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot could provide over $4.33 million to all 300 million Americans is going viral (it’s actually just four dollars and thirty-three cents).
5. People spend more on the lottery than almost anything else
Money spent by Americans on nearly every facet of American culture — tickets to sports games, movie theater tickets, books, music, and video games — pales in comparison to the amount of money Americans spend on lotto tickets each year. According to the below graphic by CNN Money, the lottery is a $70 billion per-year industry, more than what Americans spend on all of the aforementioned things combined.
Breaking that $70 billion down by household, the average American family spends roughly $630 each year on lottery tickets. In some cities, that’s almost a full month’s rent for a small apartment, a month of groceries for a small family, or enough gasoline to fuel a small car for the better part of a year.
Don’t be fooled by the lottery fever spreading across the country — the best way to escape poverty is to ignore scams like playing a game that’s almost impossible to win.
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