Lottery has been used for centuries to raise funds for a variety of purposes. The most common use was to help the poor, but also for things like building museums and repairing bridges. It was considered a very convenient and painless form of taxation.
In the end, however, lottery is just gambling. And the odds of winning are not that great, even if you buy the maximum number of tickets. There is a sliver of hope, that if you play long enough and enough tickets get sold, you will hit the jackpot. That’s not a very rational way to spend your money.
What’s more, winning a jackpot can be very traumatic. The tax burden can be huge, and many people find that they cannot manage the sudden influx of wealth. This is particularly true of the very poor, those in the bottom quintiles, who spend a large portion of their income on lottery tickets.
A better option is to create a syndicate, in which you buy multiple tickets. This increases the chance of winning, but you can also split the prize and share the joy and responsibility. And remember, that while winning the lottery can be a tremendously good thing, it is not guaranteed to make you happy or improve your life in any meaningful way.
Lottery marketing is all about selling the illusion that you have a good chance of winning, and that it is okay to gamble. It obscures the regressivity of lottery spending, and it hides how much time and money committed players spend on tickets. It is a dangerous message in a world of inequality and limited social mobility.