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While I sat at dinner with my boyfriend Saturday evening, we daydreamed about what we would do if we won the outrageous Mega Millions 1.6 billion dollar jackpot prize everyone was talking about.

“Pay off all my student loans, and buy everyone in my family houses and cars,” was my first predictable hood-rich thought.

“You’ll still have so much money left over,” he explained, “So what else?”

“An island…in Canada.” This dream he laughed off, even though I’ve thoroughly done my research and there are some islands in Canada on sale for like, $500,000 dollars. I digress.

It’s almost euphoric to think about what life would be like if luck just handed you a winning ticket, relieving you from the financial burdens that seem to drown out the joys of life.

I’m sure this blind hope is why Americans spend $73.5 billion on lottery tickets every year, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries.

Unsurprisingly, it’s mostly poor people who are copping the tickets. A 1990 study from Duke University claimed that people earning $30,000 annually are 25% more likely to play the lottery for money versus entrainment.

And the idea of playing for money is foolish in and of itself. The odds are against you, with each ticket having a 1 in 302,575,350 chance of being a winner, you most likely will never win the lottery. But the odds don’t deter hope, and that is perhaps how the government profits off the desperation of the poor.

According to CNN Business, the funds are divided across marketing and retail entities and governmental initiatives like education, social programs, and elderly and drug programs, etc, which may initially sound positive. But from a government perspective, it’s just a way to get you to pay more taxes to Uncle Sam on your won will.

“It’s almost certainly inefficient. You spend a lot of money on marketing and administration in order to collect that money,” said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of Holy Cross and an expert on lotteries.”

But government of course, loves the lottery because,  “it’s one of the only taxes out there you get people to volunteer to pay.”

And those volunteers are often poor people, which leads the government to sinisterly advertise more aggressively in low socio-economic communities, according to scholars.

Nevertheless, we play on. And one South Carolina person is a billion dollars richer today. See more reactions for the jackpot:

https://twitter.com/MegaMillionsUS/status/1055020789215440896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1055020789215440896&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fnews%2Fmega-millions-world-record-1-6-billion-jackpot-south-carolina-winning-ticket-today-2018-10-24%2F

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