State lotteries are just a tax on the stupid.
It ignores the reality that poverty is a causative agent for lacking the appropriate math skill to recognize that playing the lottery is not a good financial choice, and self-perpetuates that poverty.
Probability is like...a Grade 5-6 concept.
Ergo, it can go straight to hell and does not belong in a civilized society.
(mostly because I think it would avoid many of the life destroying parts)
This is more or less how retirement works so it's a pretty well-trodden path.
If that's the heuristic for defining stupid, we better revisit auto insurance, which also has a negative expected value.
On the other hand, maybe variance and skewness (to say nothing of kurtosis) have values (and costs) which a rational analysis needs to consider. Some people might be willing to pay to shed variance, while others might pay to take it on depending on the value of their assets and their time horizon.
The brain still has fun even knowing not going to win and just spent $2.
Five dollars won't make any difference in your situation, but twenty thousand would be a life-changing amount of money.
Unfortunately, on a meta level, it's likely that were you to win, you'd go from twenty thousand to zero sooner than you'd like.