Mega Millions Mania

If my facebook and twitter feeds are any indication, the nation has been hit with lottery fever. The 44 state Mega Millions jackpot has grown to a staggering 640 million dollars and everyone is playing. I called a deli last night to ask if they were still selling Lotto tickets and the reply I got was “640 million dollars baby, we’re selling tickets all night.”

Of course, the lottery is problematic. It often functions as a regressive tax. It offers poor folks an aspirational and unlikely chance to change their lives, but in reality it reifies the cycle of poverty. Walking into any bodega, you’re likely to be forced to wait in a long line of people buying umpteen scratch tickets. The lotto seems like free money, but really it’s a money pit, a form of gambling, where the house always wins.

People recite apocryphal stats about the unlikelihood of winning the lottery. It’s less likely than being abducted by aliens, or being by struck by lightening twice, or finding a refreshing diet drink. The number I’ve seen cited on twitter is that winning this mega millions is a 1 in 174 million shot. This math got me think; doesn’t a 1 in 174 million chance mean that there are 174 million combinations, and don’t lotto tickets cost a dollar? According to my amateur arithmetic that means one could buy every possible combination for 174 million dollars, far less than the 640 million dollar jackpot, even when you ask for it in a lump sum and taxes are subtracted from the total. It seems like free money to me. But you know what they say, you’ve got to have money to make money.

My last thought about the lottery is that I think it’s funny that the lotto is just an update of the “numbers” racket. I’m not well versed on mafia crime, but from my understanding a “numbers” racket was essentially an illicit lottery. I’m constantly watching movies were gangsters are running “numbers” rackets, or schlemiels are getting in over their head in debt, or someone strikes it rich. It’s funny that the government just adopted what used to be the domain of gangsters and uses it as an extra way to generate revenue. But this idea of legitimate government control of otherwise illicit activity is central to civilized society. I think it was either Weber or Durkheim, two pillars of modern sociology, who said that what gave the state power was the legitimate use of violence. This allowed the state to enforce laws and implicitly create social mores that the citizenry were forced to accept. The lottery is just another example of that concept.

Anyway, God knows I bought 6 dollars worth of tickets, and at this point I’m sort of cautiously optimistic. Even if I don’t win I’m pretty confident one of my friends will, and then they can be my benefactors; the Medici’s to my Da Vinci. Yahoo is running an article on its front page about the downside of winning the lottery. Most of the points are that people will try and take advantage of you, but I think that’s what’s called a good problem, I mean you’ve just hundreds of millions of dollars. Another point that’s constantly proclaimed is that many lottery winners file for bankruptcy. But whatever, easy come easy go right? Good luck to any followers of The Redel Traub Report who are invested in tonight’s 11 pm drawing, and if any of you win: don’t forget about you’re favorite blogger.