It is most certainly a tax on the poor and undereducated. The level of cognitive dissonance required to believe that there is not a massive information asymmetry at hand is simply staggering. Yes, some people are perfectly able to calculate the probability of winning the lottery and know that they should gain enjoyment just from playing, not from the belief that they'll win. These are not the people who are victims. The victims are the high school dropouts who don't understand that their chances of getting hit by lightning while simultaneously getting hit by a bus while crossing the street are still better than winning the lottery. Many, if not most, of these people don't really have the discretionary spending ability to lose hundreds of dollars a month on merely dreaming of winning the lottery. But somehow we pretend everything's fine.