FYI: At one point last week Florida was selling 550 lottery tickets per second.
For perspective, that’s 2% of what the entire Visa payment network can handle. The $2 billion Mega Million/Powerball jackpot was worth more than nine states spend on K-12 education each year.
Of course, the odds of winning were about 1 in 300 million. It’s the equivalent of taking the entire US population, picking one person at random, and that person being your mother.
Who is buying these tickets? Mostly poor people. Bloomberg recently reported:
The lowest-income households in the U.S. on average spend $412 annually on lottery tickets, which is nearly four times the $105 a year spent by the highest-earning households.
Four hundred bucks is the same amount of money that 40% of households cannot come up with in a pinch. Low-income Americans are blowing their emergency funds on a 1-in-300 million flier.
They must be crazy.
I’ve heard that a lot over the last few weeks. But let me stop you right there.
No one is crazy.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/no-one-is-crazy/
