A better way to distribute lottery winnings

 The states get 44% of lottery bets, a teriffic deal for them. Not so much for the hapless citizenry, many of whom "invest" money they can't afford to lose, in order to have a one in 300,000,000 chance of winning. And since most of them weren't math whizzes, they likely don't understand how slim the odds are when they are one in three hundred million. It basically means "zero." 

"But someone always wins!" you may say. Yep, but 299,999,999 other tickets lost. 

And the big winners have a terrible track record of surviving their win. They tend to die early, get divorced, take on unhealthy habits, and many even go bankrupt! Not a very impressive end to such a wonderful achievement. 

So, here's my proposal: If the Powerball pot gets really huge, let's split up among more folks. Some lucky stiff (pardon the pun--they might die early now) just won $1.5 BILLION and even after the magic of net present value and income taxes that's still hundreds of millions. Far more than one person can use or handle. So let's give, say, 25% to the folks who got all 6 numbers right, and the rest to those who got 5 numbers right, and depending on the size of the pot, maybe give 10% to those who got 4 numbers right. In the case of a tie, the tiebreaker could be whoever's "losing number" was closest to the correct number.

This way, maybe a thousand people would get big payouts (I mean, like, in the millions!), and the lucky stiff would still get a truly huge award--plenty with which to ruin their life.

How about it?


(photo credit: Getty Images)





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