Gov. Quinn Plays The Numbers
By Chuck Sudo in News on Feb 13, 2012 2:30PM
Gov. Pat Quinn walked the walk a couple of days ago and encouraged Illinoisans to play the lottery. Quinn purchased a $2 Powerball ticket at a Chicago liquor store in an attempt to emphasize that lottery revenues go to fund education and capital projects such as road work. Quinn joked that, if he won, he would still keep his job.That must have gone over well with the 54 percent of who responded unfavorably to Quinn's performance as governor in a recent poll.
In addition to the suspect returns on education and road projects the lottery funds, it turns out you have a better chance of getting your money back if you piss it away. The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are one in 175,233,510. You have a better chance of a payout playing blackjack at a casino than heading to your local J.J. Peppers for a last-minute lottery ticket. Ryan Glasspiegel, writing for The Awl, broke down the taxation on lottery winnings and found a lottery winner is paying out an average of 53 cents in expected return after taxes.
These are reasons why a statistics professor once called lotteries "a tax on the mathematically challenged." But the allure of a huge payout keeps people coming back, like the Rhode Island resident who eventually won the $336.4 million jackpot Saturday. If the winner picks the lump sum payment — and you can bet state governments are hoping for that — that amounts to $156 million. 40 percent of that is taxed. If there's one constant here, it's that a lottery winner will go from complaining about how the rich aren't taxed to grousing about how much of a bite Uncle Sam and the state take out of his newfound wealth.
Knowing all this, it's still surprising that people play the lottery and try to improve their chances to Lotto. We'll stay away from the lottery and take our chances with the occasional poker game.