In the United States, state lotteries are thriving. Americans spend an estimated $100 billion a year on tickets. But it wasn’t always that way. State lotteries have a long and sometimes rocky history. They are a form of gambling, and the odds of winning are very low. But for many people, especially those with little to no hope of landing a job or getting into the middle class, they provide an invaluable service: a small sliver of hope that they will one day win big.
Despite the odds, some players have been playing lottery games for years and even decades, spending $50 or $100 a week. It’s a strange thing, because the likelihood of them winning is so incredibly bad, it should be irrational. But they do it anyway, because for a moment, even if only for a few minutes or hours or days, they get value out of it: they get to dream and fantasize about being rich, all for the price of a couple of dollars.
The practice of drawing lots, or lotteries, has been around since ancient times. The first recorded lotteries were based on raising money for local needs, including town fortifications and helping the poor. Later, in the colonial era, lottery games became an important source of public funds for roads, canals, churches, colleges, and even wars. The Continental Congress endorsed lotteries to raise money for the Revolutionary War, but Alexander Hamilton warned that “the hazard of losing a trifling sum will be willingly borne for the chance of gaining considerable gain.” Eventually, however, critics came to view lottery games as a disguised tax that unfairly punished those with low incomes.
