Powerball’s massive jackpot will rollover and increase after Saturday’s drawing produced no winning tickets, according to the game’s website.
The $1.4-billion jackpot now grows to $1.55 billion but remains the third-largest in Powerball’s history (the second largest was $1.586 billion in 2016).
The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot after the July 19 drawing for the $1.08 billion pot. The winning ticket then was sold in California.
Imagine if everyone just decided they were tired of this lottery bullshit and collectively refused to play…
Personally I’d be far more interested in the lottery if we lived in a post scarcity society, where people’s needs are guaranteed to be met instead of the poorest people desperately trying to get out of poverty
I used to think of the lottery as a tax on idiots but I’ve since come to realize it’s a tax on the desperate.
I play, and I’m not desperate (and hopefully not an idiot either). Here is my reasoning, but I’m open to ideas from people who may think differently. First, obviously, playing is losing money, just like scratch-offs. However, a winning scratch-off is not life changing money, it’s likely just making back some of the money you spent or will spend. A Powerball jackpot will allow you to actually have influence in the world. If you are someone who wins and decides to mooch off society just buying yachts and hookers and blow for the rest of your life, then it’s just wasted. But the amount of change in the world by building something that betters humanity would actually be accomplishable.
General Strikes are impossible.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I find the lottery fun in moderation, but I only spend like $50 on lottery tickets a year so I’m not exactly the target audience anyway.
The lottery is by and far an excessive tax on the poor. That’s my only problem with it.
Generally the big culprit there is the scratch-off stuff you see at gas stations.
Powerball, due to the delays in reward processing, is not as “addictive” as scratch-off/peel-off gambling.
True, but I just don’t think we should incentivize funding amazing programs with money sources primarily funded by the underprivileged day dreaming of a better life. It just seems sad.
Hardcore “I’m 14 and this is deep”
Unfortunately for your world views, no. I’m 28 and able to engage in empathy for the plight of my fellow man. Sad you’ve gotten that used to callous realities.
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Few people bat an eye at spending $40 for two tickets and food to a movie for two hours. If $20 gets someone a few hours of escapism and dreaming, it’s not that big of a deal. But like any other entertainment, spending that much every day is probably not good, and certainly not if it’s done only as an investment.
I am that person who doesn’t mind $20 when it gets around 1 billion. The problem lately is I used to enjoy it more when it was $10 for 10 tickets and 2nd it really is taking a long time for anyone to win which is turning into a problem now… I am considering either dropping down to $10 or upping my starting time to 1.5 billion since it really seems to be getting pretty high quicker these days as well. This next drawing will make it $60 now in 1 week and I am not ok with it anymore.
I have a bought a few of these billion dollar tickets for fun. And ya I think about how I’d divide the money up etc. but the thing that always makes me hope I don’t win is the reality that once you realize you’ve won, you’re never going to be able to be alone again. You have to have a security team with you at all times if you’re a billionaire. I’d rather just be me tbh.
Didn’t they add another number to the Powerball which massively decreased the probability of winning?
Yup, all so that they could regularly have these massive jackpots, because a huge jackpot drives more sales of losing tickets.
That makes so much sense. I swear I remember a massive jackpot being a once every 1-2 year event. Now it’s every 1-2 months.
And it works. I played during the last huge jackpot craze. I even thought to myself that I swore there weren’t this many numbers.
Just split it among all of us already. I could use a half cup of coffee.
Wow. A crazy jackpot.
Not really, they added an extra number to the lottery so that people would be even less likely to win, which leads to larger jackpot numbers. It’s a marketing ploy meant to trick more people into paying the stupid tax.
Doesn’t a lot of the money go to scholarship funds?
Depends on the state. My state puts 40% of the funds into protecting the environment and the rest goes into the state’s general fund.
Jackpots are just another poor people tax.
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“chance to be a billionaire” “Who cares”
Is there something I’m missing
Yeah the “chance” part.
Except he mentioned the chance part.
It’s called a lottery, I think it’s generally understood that not everybody wins.
Expected return calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_return there are likely better “bets” you can make. On top of that, even if the expected return is good, you have to take into account the Kelly Criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion which limits how much of your bankroll you want to spend on a longshot, and if that’s less than the cost of a single ticket, buying tickets is more likely to bankrupt you than for you to win.
After taxes you’d still come out less than a billionaire. But if a measley rich as fuck is good enough… He’ll I’ll probably kick a couple of bucks into the pot for the next drawing.
They’re referring to how the lottery is a tax on poor people. The states/etc use large portions of funding from it to do good things, but it shouldn’t be a revenue stream for states because a majority of participants live at or below the US poverty line.
It is not a tax. Taxes are not voluntary.If you are old enough to buy a ticket you are old enough to judge the risk of buying in. That responsibility lies solely on the participant. And right or wrong it’s the biggest blessing schools in the South have ever seen. You can be mad, but don’t buy a ticket if you are.
I’m not mad, but you’re judging something that factually has potential to be addictive depending on the person, and that has been shown to be abusive to those in poverty (because again, that’s the main participants, people underprivileged day dreaming for a way out) as good just because it funds education and some otherwise very good things. We can run a lottery without incentivizing the funding to come from the underprivileged, and fund education, and should expect our government to do both.
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I mean, if someone spends $2 once in a while for the fun and daydreaming, it’s not really an idiot tax. I’ll probably buy a single ticket.
For real. I buy a ticket occasionally just because it’s fun to think about what I’d do with the money for the few days before the draw. Worth the $2 in entertainment value. I’ll occasionally win $10 or something, which is a bonus. I fail to see the issue with people spending an inconsequential amount of money for funsies.
It’s the people who spend hundreds on lottery tickets that are the problem. Even then, people with gambling problems aren’t idiots, they’re desperate people who are being taken advantage of by the gaming industry.
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Got any sources on that?
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You’re not wrong. There’s serious issues with the gambling industry that need to be dealt with, as well as outside social problems driving people to it.
That doesn’t mean the whole concept of a lottery needs to be thrown out, or that anyone who participates is an idiot.
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When someone calls it an idiot tax they mean the actual $2 tickets themselves, not the winnings.
“Idiot tax” doesn’t refer to the taxes taken from lotto winnings.
It refers to the money wasted on the minute chance of winning. So minute that only stupid people pay it. Stupid tax.
Me.
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Everyone that skipped the half lesson on probability given in public high school.
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Uh OK… So read this part again “Everyone that skipped”…
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