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on lottery jackpots
May. 18th, 2013 02:11 amI hate multi-state lotteries. Hate them, hate them, hate them.
The Powerball jackpot is currently at at ridiculous heights. It has jumped twice since the last drawing on Wednesday night -- from $475 to $550 on Thursday, and then again up to $600 million by 1pm on Friday. I fully expect it to jump again before the drawing Saturday night.
Lotteries are interesting from a psychological/sociological experiment standpoint. At low jackpot levels, only regular gamblers and a few people saying "What the hell, why not?" buy tickets, so jackpots climb fairly slowly. But as they get higher, people seem to reach a mental tipping point where the potential gain outweighs the ridiculously terrible odds of actually winning. The first tipping point is somewhere between $100 and $150 million, but things don't really start getting nuts until around $200 to $250 million. In other words, the higher the jackpot, the more people buy tickets, so the faster it climbs, so the more people buy tickets, etcetera ad infinitum. (Or until someone finally wins, anyway.) It's a self-reinforcing cycle, aided by news organizations drumming up interest.
The frenzy brings hordes of people into the smoke shop, many of whom have no idea what they're doing and so eat our time in return for very little money, since lottery tickets have a profit margin of only 6%. (That means for every dollar we sell, we only get to keep 6 cents... or in other words, in order to earn a dollar, we have to sell $17 [okay, technically $16.67, but you can't sell 67 cents worth of lottery, so in real world terms it's $17].)
It's crazy and I hate it.
...
Nonetheless, I duly chipped in $2 for our workplace pool. We won't win, but I think of it as purchasing hope. *wry*
The Powerball jackpot is currently at at ridiculous heights. It has jumped twice since the last drawing on Wednesday night -- from $475 to $550 on Thursday, and then again up to $600 million by 1pm on Friday. I fully expect it to jump again before the drawing Saturday night.
Lotteries are interesting from a psychological/sociological experiment standpoint. At low jackpot levels, only regular gamblers and a few people saying "What the hell, why not?" buy tickets, so jackpots climb fairly slowly. But as they get higher, people seem to reach a mental tipping point where the potential gain outweighs the ridiculously terrible odds of actually winning. The first tipping point is somewhere between $100 and $150 million, but things don't really start getting nuts until around $200 to $250 million. In other words, the higher the jackpot, the more people buy tickets, so the faster it climbs, so the more people buy tickets, etcetera ad infinitum. (Or until someone finally wins, anyway.) It's a self-reinforcing cycle, aided by news organizations drumming up interest.
The frenzy brings hordes of people into the smoke shop, many of whom have no idea what they're doing and so eat our time in return for very little money, since lottery tickets have a profit margin of only 6%. (That means for every dollar we sell, we only get to keep 6 cents... or in other words, in order to earn a dollar, we have to sell $17 [okay, technically $16.67, but you can't sell 67 cents worth of lottery, so in real world terms it's $17].)
It's crazy and I hate it.
...
Nonetheless, I duly chipped in $2 for our workplace pool. We won't win, but I think of it as purchasing hope. *wry*
