$70B Spent On State Lotteries Last Year

Via the Atlantic:

According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, lotteries took in $70.1 billion in sales in the 2014 fiscal year. That’s more than Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets, and recorded music sales. The national average hides a lot of variance among the states. In North Dakota, per-capita lottery spending is a pittance at just $36 a year. In South Dakota, however, it’s an egregious $755 per head. Lotto games bring in the most money per person in the mid-Atlantic and northeast: number-one Rhode Island (nearly $800 per capita!), Massachusetts, and Delaware are among the top five states, while New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania join them in the top 13 (so does Washington, D.C.).

The national annual average is about $300 per adult.

John Oliver On The Lottery

"Last year Americans spent more on the lottery than they spent on movie tickets, music, porn, major league baseball, the NFL, and video games combined."

REPORT: $590M Lottery Winner To Share Fortune With Her Gay Son And His Partner

Last week Florida resident Gloria Mackenzie, 84, came forward as the $590M winner of the largest individual lottery jackpot prize in US history.  According to the British tabloid Daily Mail, Mackenzie is going to share the jackpot with her 57 year-old son Scott, who lives in Jacksonville with his partner Jerry, age 65.

Gloria, whose husband Ralph died in 2005, was forced to leave the trailer she had called home for 25 years to move into a run-down $30,000 bungalow in the small town of Zephyrhills, Florida, just one year ago.  She had pledged to split the winnings with son Scott, of Jacksonville, Florida, as she was with him when she bought the $2 ticket at a Zephyrhills supermarket on May 18. Gloria has two sons, Larry and Scott, and two daughters, Melinda – known as Mindy – and Jaimie, alongside grandchildren Matthew, Alex, Scott and Lindsay, and two great-grandchildren, Victoria and Ethan. Most of her family remain in her home state of Maine and it remains unknown how, or if, she plans to share the jackpot with them.

After being thrust into the spotlight last week, Gloria spent the weekend with Scott and Jerry, and the trio were seen dining at Jacksonville spot Joe’s Crab Shack on Sunday – where she ate steam pots that cost $22.99 each. On Monday, Scott and Gloria were seen visiting a bank and later shopping at Walmart. They then enjoyed lunch at the Crazy Egg café – where the most expensive item on the menu costs $10.99 - and even asked for a doggy bag of left overs as they departed. Gloria is now planning to move into a luxury new home in the city of Jacksonville, three hours away, with both Scott and Jerry.

The main sources of the Daily Mail's story are neighbors of both the mother and son, as well as the son's ex-wife, who claims that she and Scott remained close friends after they divorced ten years ago following his coming out to her. (Tipped by JMG reader John)

Open Thread Thursday

Your lottery fantasy. Let's hear it.

DC's Soul Train Scratcher

Some critics are saying that Washington DC's new Soul Train scratcher is meant "make poor black people spend more of their money."

Lesbian Couple Wins $10M Florida Lottery

HUGE props to Fort Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel for their wording:

A Coral Springs woman has claimed a $10 million lottery win -- the largest haul of the year so far in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Tara Tuttle, 35, claimed the $10 million top prize in the Billion Dollar Blockbust Scratch-off game at Florida Lottery headquarters in Tallahassee. Tuttle (pictured with her wife, Cary Tullis on the left) chose the one-time, lump-sum payment option of $6.5 million The winning ticket was purchased from Publix, located at 2201 N. University Drive in Coral Springs.

Bolding is mine! (Tipped by JMG reader Kathy)

California's Lottery Cam Is Watching You

Your dream of changing your name and vanishing into the ether with your winnings won't happen in California, where lottery officials have published surveillance video of a big winner checking his ticket.

"We see this as an integrity and transparency issue," said Russ Lopez, California Lottery Deputy Director of Corporate Communications, in a statement. “The California Lottery truly believes that when a person buys a lottery ticket with the hope and prayer of changing their lives, we should do all we can to connect them with their winnings. We believe this effort will make a lot of Californians very happy.”

Blogger Aksarbent is not amused.

What's really happening isn't a "transparency issue," obviously, but a quasi-government agency employing tabloid journalism tactics to further publicize and promote its ultra-long-shot gambling product, which Warren Buffett once called "a tax on the stupid." So know this if you buy a winning lottery ticket in California: You may wish to remain anonymous while getting your affairs in order and consulting with attorneys (and perhaps having an attorney claim the ticket for your trust so that every grasping friend and relative and burglar and stalker and grifter won't come after you) but the California Lottery may decide to veto your sensible choice and release security camera footage of you to the entire world, as if you were a bank robber.

What Would YOU Do With Half A Billion?

Fantasize away...

Obama's PowerBall Winner Announced

The Obama campaign has been raffling off a dinner with the president, a populist schtick I find rather undignified for the office. Today they announced their first winner.

Cyndi Lauper For New York Powerball

Lottery Billboard Smashes BQE

A massive illegal billboard promoting the Mega Millions lottery came crashing down onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on Friday.

Officials at the Department of Buildings say advertisements at the location are illegal. “It’s a miracle that nobody got hurt, because this is always busy, especially around 2 o'clock,” said one resident. “I ride my bike up Meeker Avenue all the time—warm, cold, whatever. So, I mean, I could have been right under that when it came down. So of course we're all lucky that there were no people,” said another. Residents say they've seen billboards in the neighborhood sway under high winds, especially during Irene. DOB officials say the city has been cracking down on illegal billboards since 2009, but it hasn't been easy since many are old enough to be exempt from new restrictions.

Financial Illiteracy

Sullivan links today to this bit of insanity:

In a recent consumer study, 21 percent of individuals surveyed – including 38 percent of those with income below $25,000 – reported that winning the lottery was “the most practical strategy for accumulating several hundred thousand dollars” of wealth for their own retirement. In addition, 16 percent thought that winning the lottery was the best retirement strategy for all Americans, not just themselves.

My mother likes to say that the lottery is for people that don't understand math.

Powerball Winner Caught On Tape

As a local Missouri television crew followed Powerball officials at the convenience store that sold the winning $258M ticket, a rather ramshackle looking fellow walks up to inquire about his numbers. I love it when these winners seem to be hard luck cases. How did he stay so calm?

Wallet Envy

The New York Lottery gets cute. Big dick jokes! Sorta!