The Dangers of Playing the Lottery
1 min readA lottery is a game where people pay money for a chance to win a prize, and the prizes are often cash. Examples include the NBA Draft Lottery, where the winners get first pick of top college talent, and the lottery for housing units or kindergarten placements in a public school system.
People who play the lottery are not stupid – they know that the odds of winning are low, and that the prizes are usually small (the jackpot is only one in millions). However, the lure of big bucks still drives many to buy tickets. For some, it is an inextricable part of their human nature to gamble, but the lottery can be a dangerous way to gamble.
In the rare case that someone does win, they face significant taxes on their jackpot and often end up bankrupt within a few years. Americans spend upwards of $80 billion on lottery tickets each year – money they could be saving for an emergency fund, retirement, or their children’s college education.
States promote their lotteries as good ways to raise revenue – a message that implies that the state will use the proceeds for something worthwhile, and therefore that buying a ticket is not a waste of money. However, it is hard to know how meaningful the revenue really is, and whether the trade-off of state funding for citizens to gamble is worth it.