I remember standing in a Georgia convenience store in 2018 watching a construction worker buy $120 worth of Powerball tickets with a wrinkled stack of fives. His hands were calloused, his boots caked in drywall dust, and I thought: this is exactly who they’re targeting. Seven years later, with Powerball hitting a $930 million jackpot, the game hasn’t changed. Only the zeros have.

The odds remain one in 292 million. You’re more likely to be canonized as a saint (one in 20 million) or spontaneously conceive identical quadruplets (one in 15 million). Yet here we are again, with news anchors breathlessly updating jackpot counters while failing to mention an uncomfortable truth. State governments have transformed desperation into a $100 billion annual revenue stream, and it’s being sold as harmless fun.

Let’s start with the math they don’t plaster on billboards. That $930 million headline? It assumes you take annual payments over 30 years, a structure so laughably outdated I’m surprised they haven’t rebranded it as 19th century retro chic. The real take home after taxes and lump sum reductions shrinks to around $300 million for Wednesday’s winner. Still life changing, absolutely. But also mathematically improbable to the point of being functionally fictional for 99.99997% of players.

Three critical angles get buried beneath the jackpot mania. First, this is America’s most regressive voluntary tax. Multiple studies, including a landmark Duke University analysis of 5,000 lottery retailers, show ticket sales quintuple in zip codes with median incomes under $25,000. Compare that to Whole Foods parking lots where people barely glance at lottery signs. States know this. Massachusetts even trademarked the slogan “Someone’s Gotta Win” while running ads showing janitors quitting jobs. The hypocrisy is staggering considering these same governments would shutter a predatory payday lender using identical tactics.

Second, modern lotteries employ casino grade psychological warfare. The Power Play multiplier? Pure Skinner box manipulation. Near miss effects where your ticket matches four numbers plus the Powerball? Designed to trigger the same dopamine surges as slot machines. Even the absurdly inflated jackpot amounts serve a purpose. A Cornell study found sales growth outpaces jackpot growth beyond $300 million, meaning we respond irrationally to numbers we can’t conceptually grasp.

Third, consider where the money actually flows. Powerball operates as a de facto cartel with 45 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets sales fund three streams: prizes (about 50%), retailer commissions (5 6%), and state coffers (the remaining 44%). Sounds benign until you track the allocations. Pennsylvania uses lottery money for senior citizen programs while simultaneously cutting senior healthcare budgets. California earmarks funds for schools yet per student spending remains below pre 2008 levels. This isn’t supplemental income. It’s budgetary shell games with human capital.

And let’s not romanticize the winners. Remember Abraham Shakespeare? The 2006 Florida Powerball winner murdered by someone seeking his dwindling fortune. Or the West Virginia couple who blew $114 million on luxury cars, a private jet, and 19 lawsuits from relatives. Jack Whittaker, the 2002 $315 million winner, had his granddaughter found dead with cocaine in her system and millions stolen by acquaintances. Of course, state lottery commissions never show these aftermath documentaries between commercials featuring beaming winners holding oversized checks.

The cognitive dissonance here would be impressive if it weren’t tragic. States criminalize sports gambling rings for exploiting vulnerabilities then partner with scientific gambling consultancies to optimize lottery addictiveness. They decry income inequality while running ads suggesting a $2 ticket could solve systemic poverty. As someone who’s covered financial exploitation from subprime mortgages to crypto pump and dumps, I recognize the playbook. Dangle transformational wealth. Downplay probabilities. Monetize desperation.

None of this stops me from occasionally buying a ticket. That’s the genius of it. The jackpot leverages something primal, the what if that bypasses logic. But after witnessing three decades of lottery mania since Powerball went national in 1992, the pattern is clear. Wednesday’s drawing will mint one multimillionaire while transferring over $400 million from predominantly working class pockets to state budgets. The lottery isn’t a game. It’s the only government endorsed Ponzi scheme where participants willingly line up for their turn at financial oblivion. And state treasuries wouldn’t have it any other way.