NYT: "
The Billion-Dollar Jackpot: Engineered to Drain Your Wallet"
If
you’ve noticed that colossal lottery winnings are becoming almost
common this year, it’s no accident. Four of the 10 biggest jackpots in
United States history have already occurred in 2016, an engineered
outcome intended to generate mind-bogglingly big winners.
That’s
thrilling if you are the rare winner of hundreds of millions of
dollars. But whether it’s a good thing for scores of millions of other
people who play government-sponsored lottery games is highly
questionable, as a close look at the numbers reveals.