News @lemmy.world MicroWave @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

No winner in Monday's Powerball drawing has the next jackpot approaching $1 billion

www.npr.org /2023/07/18/1188238207/no-winner-in-mondays-powerball-drawing-has-the-jackpot-approaching-1-billion

28 comments

On the one hand, what a waste of money. But I can't help but imagine if I won, that would change my life...
- If you want to be depressed, look at what happened to most lottery winner's lives. Or an average NFL player. Or anyone gets a huge cash windfall.
  
  The best situations are gradual increases in wealth
  
  Maybe so, but I’d take my chances with hundreds of million dollars.
- The odds of winning the jackpot are basically the same whether you enter or not.
  
  If you don't enter, you have certainty of not winning
- Congratulations!
  
  Now you're fucked...
Time to waste $3!
- Hey that $3 buys me the ability to daydream about my life as a multimillionaire for a couple days, before I crash back to reality slightly less satisfied than before!
  
  I’ve paid more for less.
The new jackpot for Wednesday's drawing would be the third highest in U.S. history and will keep growing until someone wins. Ticket buyers have a chance at $1 billion paid out in yearly increments or a $516.8 million one-time lump sum before taxes.
- Always take the lump sum. Pay off your debts then stick it into reliable investments and live off the income from it.
  
  With a 500m lump sum, you could also take a 100k to just blow on whatever you want with basically 0 impact. You definitely need to limit though l.
  
  Random but your Netscape avatar is awesome.
Why can't they just split it up and make it 100 $10 million prizes?
- They actually changed it, making it harder to win, to create these giant jackpots. The huge number draws people in.
- The Euro millions has a €240M cap at which the jackpot is divided up in to the lower tier prizes if there is still no winner. The UK national lottery has a cap on roll overs at 5 where the top prize will roll down to the lower tiers if no winner remains.
- Because then you wouldn't get the people who rarely play to throw money in.
  
  The bigger jackpots incentivize those who don't play for the "pennies" at less than 500 million. They actually reduced the odds of winning a few years ago for this exact reason.
- If 100 people have the winning numbers then that's what'll happen.
A Tax on People bad at Math.
- Funny you say that. There’s about 300 million possible numbers so at $2 per ticket you only need to win over $600 million for the lottery to be plus EV. Factor in 37% tax (which is what Google says is the average rate, but may be different depending on state) you “only” need a jackpot of about 950 million to profit.
- I play it. I know that the odds make me more likely to die in the time it would take me to claim the prize than to actually win, but someone has to win it and the lotteries in Europe and the UK give a lot of money to good causes.
  
  Lottery paid for my college education so yeah I don’t mind throwing 2 bucks at it every once is a while.

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