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Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> “Americans spend more on lottery tickets every year than on cigarettes, coffee, or smartphones,” Cohen writes, “and they spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined.”

That's amazing if true, though it sounds unbelievable to me. Given the other statistic that "[o]ne in two American adults buys a lottery ticket at least once a year, one in four buys one at least once a month" the avid players at the edge must be spending a heck of a lot for that to add up...

I don't gamble at all, but I tend to think of lottery tickets as pretty harmless. I've never seen anybody show up to a gas station and buy more than a few dollars worth of tickets, though I'm sure there are outliers who would. It's just hard for me to credit this given my back of the envelope math and personal experience. Hopefully the actual book has citations and I can check on it.

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Counter example just for argument's sake: gaming whales

There's a whole-ass industry built on exploiting them. How many of them have you personally heard of vs non-whales?

> I've never seen anybody show up to a gas station and buy more than a few dollars worth of tickets

It's easy to wonder how it could all add up, if it's $1 now and then to enter Power Ball whenever it gets big, which I'm guessing is what you're imagining.

"personas" I've seen with regards to scratch tickets where it adds up quick-

1) Asks the clerk to throw in a $5 or $10 ticket every time they're at the store buying cigarettes

2) Starts with a single ticket now and then, and uses proceeds from every win to keep buying an increasing amount of tickets until it's gone or mostly gone.

3) Group of friends who go in on spending a few thousand on a whole roll of scratch tickets to get a lot of shots at a jackpot, and on average the tickets return something like 80% (i.e. 20% loss) so it probably won't be a total loss

Some people spend $10-20 on them. And that adds up quickly if you do it multiple times a week.

In 2020 it was $26.692393b. From https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/lottery-revenue

In 2020 Apple iPhone sales were $73.3b in the Americas, which includes South America. From https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/

Sounds dubious. But lotto sales were really, really high. $26.7b could have gone to something worthy.

The reason lottos are bad, and which is really poorly articulated in this article about empathetic personal stories, is that they compete in the $1-3 category, where cultural products thrive. Unlike an income tax increase, which competes in the $1,000+ category (typically). But nonetheless similar to a sales tax (increase may be $0.10-$1.00 per purchase).

It really is as simple as, "pay for this app it costs one coffee." We are all worse off competing against this bullshit. That said, Apple and Google could ban virtual slot machines, DraftKings, etc. and little of value would be lost, and its other developers would gain a lot, but nah, they don't do that, because they are greedy.

The $26 billion is revenue. Not lotto sales.

It's a very inefficient and uneven redistribution of wealth.

I'm not sure I understand this distinction. Revenue is all the money coming in, before expenses. Are you thinking the actual number should be higher or lower?

I think that revenue doesn't include tickets - payouts. If you win $20 on a $1 scratch off, that is $19 in cash that is removed from the cash register and charged to the state.

Indeed. Gross ticket sales would be approximately double the reported revenue.

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