MegaBucks Mean MegaProblems

I like to gamble. I used to like it a little too much, like Elvis did bacon. So, I'm hardly waiving the abstinence flag over here. I am however, amused by the media attention this week's huge Powerball and Megabucks lottery jackpots are generating. Sure, we'd all like to come into $300 million. But at what cost? If the lotteries continue to force winners into the spotlight by naming them publicly, the price of winning is simply too high.

For most, playing the lottery is an amusing way to throw money down the drain. For those "lucky" enough to win, it's an unexpected nightmare. I'm in position to know. I used to purchase lottery annuities for a living. I know what life's really like after the lottery snaps a neophyte winner's picture, puts away the oversized check, and sends them home to the wolves.

Believe me, you're better off without the trouble.

The vast majority of states do not allow winners to claim their prizes anonymously. Not only are most winners unprepared to handle the realities of such a windfall, but, thanks to the lotteries, winners are forced to live their post lottery lives squarely in the public eye. Why? Marketing, publicity, advertising, and sales. The state lotteries have sales goals, just like a privately held business. The public's ability to see new winner's faces and know their names drives business. Forget the fact that using new winners for publicity largely devastates winners' lives. To the lotteries, business is business. They sell their product with marketing savvy and sales methods as venomous as any in the private sector. For the lotteries, it's sell first, worry about the winners once the receipts are tallied. But, unlike private businesses, the lotteries are state run. The states should know better. they should be held to a higher standard than the private sector.

This week, both the Powerball and Megabucks jackpots exceeded $300 Million. In other words, we're talking Oprah money. And, when the stakes get that high, the local and national media plug in, feeding us our own fantasies the same way foie gras farmers feed their ducks. They shove it down our throats.

We live during the lottery's zenith, and we seemingly can't get enough. Every news segment about lottery fever has the same canned images: the clerks, the lines, the lottery machines printing out ticket after ticket. There's the obligatory shots of players holding tiny pencils, agonizing over their numbers as if defusing a bomb. Yet, these stories, which drive lottery sales figures, look past the dark underbelly that comes with winning. What happens to the precious few who become lottery winners?

Well, we know they get to stand there with that big check. We know that the lotteries keep telling us how great life is for winners. We should also know that they've got nowhere to hide. Anyone who wants to find them can. And, it should come as no surprise, a lot of folks want to get in touch with someone who just came into millions of dollars.

Thanks to the lotteries policy of publicizing new winners' names, massive odds say they won't end up living happily ever after. Very few winners sail off into the sunset. Most end up staying right where they are, surrounded by sycophants, con-artists, salesmen, family, and friends. If the lotteries were to change their policies and allow winners to claim their prizes anonymously, many of the problems winners face would be eliminated.

For years, Michigan has allowed its winners to claim their prizes anonymously. Recently, Delaware has followed suite. If more states act in kind, winners will have a shot at what they've always been promised: the good life.

This week's Powerball and Megabucks jackpots are so big that winning actually means riches beyond your wildest dreams. Winning a million dollars, paid out over twenty years is often a recipe for trouble. Winning $300 Million...I'd take a shot at that life. You can make a lot of boneheaded moves with $300 million and still be happy.

Play if you want. Win if you're lucky. But, no matter how much you win, if your state lets you, keep it to yourself.

Comments

[Spookcatcher]

I have proposed, for 20 years now,legislation that would increase the state's lottery's success and immediately benefit the local and state economy of all the winners. Lottery winnings should never go over 1 million dollars without being given away. Most lotteries are configured to return to the winner and pay the retailer a total amounting to 55% (45+10) leaving the state 45% to use as earmarked in their respective law. Should the money be immediately paid as soon as 1 million is reached, studies clearly show the winnings would immediatley debt relieve (my bill requires that) i.e. credit cards, etc. the winner, and then the winners according to all polling samples would by admission pay off or purchase a home. A car. and usually it includes some type of investment in education or college funding. That means the money is returned to immediate recirculation back into society. Whereas, and espaecially on huge payouts, the winners opt for the lump sum. They are then besieged by lawyers accountants and other bloodsucking parasites and in fact may never realize the total benefit of their winnings. They are budgeted and tax sheltered and society, and the local and state they won in loses the return to the economy and future taxes along with them. Just think about the excitement of every day on TV and radio, for a dollar ticket, literally, someone becoming a millionaire, may be 2 or three a day! The state's portion of the money (also spelled out in my Bill) must also go directly in to a wholly separated and publicly viewable online account review system for exactly and who exactly there gambling dollars go to! If it is supposed to go to schools, it will be traceable to the dollar what it paid for! I have a National proposal as well as provisions for "special" (as in Katrina disaster or 9/11 type) victim relief fund building Lotteries in my Bill also.

[MoeJava]

If you are lucky and win, retain an Attorney to pick it up. They will make sure the taxes are paid, deposit the rest into an escrow account for you. It will be as anonymous as possible. Only costs you the retainer.

[mrcontinental]

Indeed. There is no way I would willingly allow anyone to know and if they leaked it I'd simply leave the country. Nothing is worth that kind of attention.

[realitytrumpsbull]

My tinfoil-hat suspicion is that they PICK winners. Yes, the people that run the lottery win it, not you. The 'winner' is an artificial construct meant to keep other people playing and spending their money on lottery tickets.
300 million? How much did the lottery organizers take in compared to that? Hmmm....

[Jason357]

Good article, Ed. I've thought about that myself. The big problem for Lottery winners is that they go from nothing to everything. Even after sharing multiple ways, I think the winners still got 29 million dollars cash payment. That's enough to lure professional heist artists.

I agree with you. I think mentioning the store where the ticket was sold is plenty of advertisement. However, playing the devil's advocate, by not documenting exactly who won the citizenry might think it's rigged and the government is just keeping it all. I personally wouldn't care. I'd move out of the US anyway, if I had the money.

[anfractuous]

Who knows how many revolutions have died in infancy thanks to the prospect of winning the lottery? Megabucks at an indefinite, but certain point in your future now takes the place of a guaranteed ticket to heaven in damping the smoldering resentments of life.

The fantasies provided for $2 keep the economy humming, and the the REAL megabucks flowing ever upward.

[PlacitasRoy]

"I like to gamble." I do too, that's why I never buy a lottery ticket. When I gamble I want a realistic opportunity to win.
The lottery is simply a tax on the mathematically illiterate.

[yellowdogSC]

Yes and no.

The odds are the same as with ANY gamble.

Either 100% that you'll win, or 100% that you won't.

There's no such thing as 1 in 150 MILLION without immortality.

Besides, each new ticket resets the odds back to "either 100% that you'll win, or 100% that you won't."

[swift goat pet for truth]

I used to live in LA, When friends from out of town came, I used to drive them around Beverly Hills / Belair to look at the houses. Then I would tell them, "The people who live in these houses are really, REALLY unhappy."

[swift goat pet for truth]

I buy Lotto tickets to fantasize.
But if I ever win, I am changing my name, my Social Security Number, and taking my family to Europe (or maybe New Zealand) for at least a year. Then I will come back, but not to live in the state that I do now.

[Crowhaul]

Great... an article to truly help the .0003% of us. Bravo?

[Desiderata]

I think that's why a working man would vote Republican__out of some thought that, just maybe, a hugh jackpot will be his somedays and only republicans can be trusted to protect his future windfall.

He probably prays every night, along with millions of others, that God rig the jackpot in his favor.

That scene of millions of lottery prayers sweeping over Jim Carry's computor screen in the movie "Bruce Almighty" comes to mind.

[kitsapdem]

Good Point - so many so-called rethugs think that they might get rich. What a joke! There's a reason they call it the top 5%! Instead of the lottery, why didn't we all learn as kids to invest $100 a month into a secure interest bearing account. Compound Interest plus TIME = Lottery. I think the powers that be don't want to teach the kids this..then who would work at Mickie D's?

[Malarcus]

Most folks who are on the Forbe's list are accustomed to having large amounts of wealth.

As it is, I'm in for $50 along with 12 others.... ;-)

[JacobG8t]

I cannot help but thinking I would like to take my chances. What's the difference between being a lottery winner and being listed on the Forbe's list?

[JebSpringfield]

I think one difference is that lots of opportunists will think that a lottery winner is an easy mark. Someone on the Forbes' list, not so much.