Lottery is a scam.?

Question

Lottery is a scam.?

Answer 1

Lotteries, for the most part, are not a "scam" but the winning payout is a very small percentage of what they take in.

Example:  Assume you buy a lottery ticket for $1.00 and you win.  You receive $1,000 back.  Whoopeee, right?  

Not so fast.  Maybe you should have received $10,000!  

If 10,000 people bought tickets, the lottery pool would have had a total of $10,000 dollars in it.  And your chances of winning would be 9,999 to 1.  But since they first take $9,000 off the top, and then only give the REMAINING portion to the winner, you only "won" $1,000.

I'm just making up numbers here, because the amount of money each state keeps as a percentage is different.  The point is, they take out a lot!  Your chances of winning are FAR greater than the payout!

Would you pay $1.00 to try to correctly call the flip of a coin?  I'll even let you flip it.  You have a 50-50 chance of winning right?  Oh, I almost forgeto.  If you call it correctly, I'm only going to give you back .20.  That's your "prize."

See how ridiculous that is?  You're risking a dollar to try to win .20 on what is a 50-50 proposition.  If you win, you should be getting back $1.00, not .20.

Lotteries are the same priniciple.  You're getting paid far less than the true odds.

Answer 2

State run lotteries are not a scam however the chances of winning are extremely thin !

Answer 3

If you mean the emails you get, yes.  If you mean the ones run by the state, no.

Answer 4

Yes, pretty much though the state-run lotteries at least give you a snowball's chance in Flatrock of winning _something_.