Lottery live sdy is a popular form of gambling. People spend billions a year on tickets, and those who win can often find themselves worse off than before. But how does it work? And why do so many people play?

The answer is that people just like to gamble. It’s hard to resist the idea of having millions of dollars for just a couple bucks. Even if we know it’s unlikely, there’s always that little sliver of hope. Lotteries play on this, sprinkling billboards around the country with huge jackpot amounts and encouraging people to buy tickets.

But what state governments don’t tell you is that the money they take in from these games is a tiny fraction of overall state revenues. And they also tend to obscure how much regressivity lottery games add.

The first lottery was organized in the Roman Empire as a way to raise funds for repairs in Rome. The prizes, which were usually fancy items, were distributed during dinner parties. These early lotteries were not a way for ordinary people to get rich, but a form of social control.

States grew to love the idea of lotteries because they provided a painless form of taxation. But the truth is that these taxes fall disproportionately on poor and middle-class families. And the money that states raise from these games is not enough to offset the costs they impose on people. Especially as the economy grows, those costs will only rise.