[ReggieCommaRose]

I imagine a big part of lottery winners going bankrupt are due to lack of education and/or comfort in having that much money at once (after all, the vast vast vast majority of lottery players are lower middle class to poor). It sounds like the writer (somewhat ironically) came from money so she'll probably be aight.

[BurningFrog]

Smart people don't play the lottery.

[bengale]

This always feels like a laboured point. I play a line a week, I don't notice the £2, the lottery pays out a lot to different charities and one day if I'm very lucky I might get an email telling me I won some money. I'm sure there's worse places to lose a couple of quid.

[proto-n]

Also, it's fun! I don't play often, but when I do, it's for the daydreaming and "what if"-s that comes with the experience.

[bengale]

I do enjoy a bit of fantasy mansion shopping on rightmove over a coffee on occasion.

[ilkkao]

lottery is the only charity work I do

[tyleo]

I used to believe this but I’m not so sure it’s true. Gambling is addictive and I think that things which are addictive can overcome reason.

I know a lot of smart developers who buy loot boxes in games, for example.

[HappySweeney]

I used to have a similar outlook (stating that lotteries are a tax on the mathematically illiterate), but now $3 for that small rush when I check the numbers is for sure worth it.

[no-s]

> $3 for that small rush when I check the numbers is for sure worth it.

I used to enjoy drinking wine, a glass of red wine every day, but I had to cut way back to "occasional" due to health concerns. Lottery's way cheaper than wine, and I still get to enjoy a little creative musing when I imagine how I would spend my time after winning. I could imagine I bought the lottery ticket, but that would be like imagining I drank the wine, heheh.

When planning disaster recovery scenarios it's much friendlier to start with "$KeyEmployee has just won the lottery and gone full F*kTheWorld" instead of morbidly assigning HitByBus.

[jsjsbdkj]

This is extremely condescending. For someone with assets (retirement savings, a house, etc.) playing the lottery doesn't make sense - you could save that money and have a marginally better life just by investing it. For people on the other side of the financial divide, life is basically framed in terms of debt. They will never get on top of the student loans, medical debt, credit card debt, car payments, payday loans, etc. that are constantly draining any excess cash they have.

The lottery is one of the few ways they could escape this debt spiral - if they could get a positive bank balance, they could begin to accumulate assets. That's not to say most people are able to do it, because suddenly having a lot of cash without financial literacy is dangerous. There's also a strong impulse to help out the people around you, which is tough because if the money is spread too thin none of the beneficiaries escape the debt cycle, they just reduce their balances slightly and then continue sliding downwards.

All that to say, playing the lottery is not stupid, it's a rational response to a society that's designed to drain the wallets of the most vulnerable for the benefit of the wealthy.

[BurningFrog]

You seem to claim that people unable to earn a living and/or manage their finances are just as smart and capable as the general population.

That is wildly counter intuitive. Is there any data to support it?

[jsjsbdkj]

1 in 10 americans lives in poverty, which is 25k/year or less for a family of four. Your position is that those are just the stupidest, least capable 10% of people and they deserve to be impoverished? If you work full time and you don't make a liveable income, how are you supposed to "manage your finances" better? If you have a disability and you can't work full time, does that make you stupid for not being able to "earn a living"?

[BurningFrog]

The "So are you saying <absurd vilifying caricature of statement>" pattern is a sure sign of someone not worth the time to engage.

[ReggieCommaRose]

The state lottery specifically? Maybe? Though it could just be a case of the state lotteries not being targeted at the better off and better educated demographic. The lottery is also just so transparent. But I see very smart people gamble in games they don't understand well all the time. It's just fun sometimes.

The writer played a lottery, just a different kind.