Powerball and Mega Millions may offer some of the worst bets in America

America suddenly has a gambling problem.

Sports betting is everywhere. Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket let people wager on everything from football games to elections. Politicians and regulators are asking whether we’ve gone too far.

Fair question.

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But there’s another gambling operation that’s been sitting on street corners for decades, quietly pickpocketing people. The government lottery. And it may offer some of the worst bets in America.

Americans bought more than $113 billion in lottery products in fiscal 2024, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. That’s more than $300 million every single day.

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And business is booming. Census Bureau data show state lottery ticket sales nearly doubled from $52.8 billion in 2008 to $104.7 billion in 2024. Apparently inflation hasn’t killed America’s appetite for becoming an instant millionaire.

The odds are almost comical

Let’s start with Powerball. Your odds of winning the jackpot are approximately: 1 in 292.2 million. Mega Millions? 1 in 290.5 million.

You could buy one Mega Millions ticket every week for 100 years and purchase only about 5,200 tickets. Those aren’t just bad odds.

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They’re astronomical odds.

Yet lotteries have gotten increasingly creative at selling the dream. Mega Millions increased its ticket price from $2 to $5, promising bigger starting jackpots and built-in prize multipliers. Now Powerball is getting into football with a $5 NFL-themed game across nearly two dozen states.

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Then there are scratch-offs. Walk into almost any convenience store and you’ll see an entire wall of them. $5. $10. $20. Even $50 scratch-off tickets.

We’re not selling a little $1 fantasy anymore. We’re selling some expensive dreams.

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The people who can least afford it

Here’s where the lottery bothers me most. A wealthy person spending $20 on lottery tickets generally doesn’t matter financially. But someone living paycheck to paycheck or making $50,000 a year spending $20 every week is blowing more than $1,000 a year.

Let’s start with Powerball. Your odds of winning the jackpot are approximately: 1 in 292.2 million. Mega Millions? 1 in 290.5 million.

For a lower-income household, that’s real money. That’s an emergency fund. That’s credit-card debt. That’s a Roth IRA contribution.

Invest $1,000 annually for 30 years earning a hypothetical 8%, and you could accumulate more than $113,000. Instead, that money may be disappearing one scratch-off at a time.

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That’s why economists have long raised concerns about lotteries being effectively regressive. The issue isn’t necessarily who spends the most dollars. It’s how large that spending is as a percentage of someone’s income.

But it’s for the children!

Here’s my favorite part. When somebody trades on Kalshi or Polymarket, suddenly we’re worried they’re gambling. When somebody repeatedly hands money to a state lottery? We’re funding education! That’s some pretty good marketing.

To be fair, lotteries do fund legitimate government programs. U.S. lotteries transferred nearly $30.6 billion to government beneficiaries in fiscal 2024, supporting education, veterans, senior programs and other public purposes.

Great. But let’s call the transaction what it is. Government is raising revenue by selling its citizens extremely long odds of becoming rich. And unlike prediction markets, there’s no research that’s going to help you pick six random numbers.

Cheng “Charlie” Saephan holds a display check above his head after speaking during a news conference where it was revealed that he was one of the winners of the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot at the Oregon Lottery headquarters on Monday, April 29, 2024, in Salem, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

No earnings report. No polling data. No economic forecast. Just luck.

The house always wins

Prediction markets deserve scrutiny. Sports betting deserves scrutiny. And people absolutely need to understand the risks of gambling. But government lotteries shouldn’t get some moral exemption simply because the proceeds fund popular programs.

Buy a Powerball ticket for entertainment. Grab a scratch-off for your birthday. Dream about the mansion and Ferrari. Just don’t confuse any of it with building wealth.

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Because in almost every form of gambling, there’s an old saying we’ve heard for decades: The house always wins.

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With America’s lottery system, there’s just one interesting twist. The house is your government.

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