Lotto Fever.

Sure, the jackpot for the Mega Millions lottery is an all-time high of $640 million – and ticket sales on Friday are through the roof. But winning brings its own complications. Read on.

California is seeking NEW wealthy people to win the Lotto Maga Millions Jackpot . At the Same time Gov. Jerry Brown is looking to Tax Millionaires, or anyone that makes over 250,000 $ . I want to write what Good old Pres. Obama said about the Lottery  . Sure enough he's right on this one,  here is what he said :

Appearing on the public TV program “Chicago Tonight,” then-State Sen. Obama argued that the lottery is not a good way to spend money, especially for the poor.

“One of the concerns that I have, obviously, is that a disproportionate number of people who consistently buy lottery tickets tend to be lower-income and working-class people who can least afford it,” he said. “Even if they’re not compulsive gamblers, they are probably spending money that they don’t necessarily have.”

 Obama also suggested that state lotteries’ marketing practices made them complicit in fleecing the low-income crowd.

“Now, we might say that this is their entertainment dollar the same way that somebody else has entertainment dollar and spends it on a movie,” he said. “But I think the fact that the state systematically targets what we know to be lower income persons as a way of raising revenue is troublesome.
“I would argue that if you look at it as a whole, in most states across the board, this tends to be a form of regressive taxation, and I don’t think it’s necessarily the fairest way for us to raise revenue for us in the state,” he said.

The Mad rush to buy the Maga million ticket is not a good way to spend your money even if it's a dollar . I know some persons who spent hundreds and thousands for the winning ticket  . As suckers , the odds are always 1 to 2 million that you'll have have the winning numbers , the more you buy your odds go up 2 % if you calculate it right. The Lottery in California is a government con-game , they want you to buy tickets so you would support Public Education , which hardly gets any of the  money . K-12 Districts are going to get only 100 million out of it , and spread it to 1100 school districts . Which has drastically cut Billions over the years . It's almost chump change . The Lucky winner (s) will probably end up getting taxed by Jerry Brown if he get's his way this November


NOTES & COMMENTS:


Others say what's tragic is that more people don’t pay heed to the miniscule chance of winning the Mega Millions. According to lottery officials, the odds of possessing the winning ticket are 1 in 176 million – meaning an individual would be more likely to get hit by lightning or be eaten by a shark. One statistician notes that the Chicago Cubs have a better chance of winning the World Series this year.
“People know there are long odds,” says Scott Hoover, a professor of business administration at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. “But people are irrational in buying. They see it as a form of entertainment because if you look at it as an investment, it’s a horrible thing to do.”
Some buyers are well aware that winning is a very remote possibility. At New York’s Port Authority bus terminal, Henry Wallace is among the lottery players lined up Friday at a Hudson News kiosk.
“I figure it’s about the same as the chances of Nicole Kidman walking into the Port Authority and handing me an Oscar,” says Mr. Wallace, who works for the Bergen County (New Jersey) government. “But why not? It’s just a dollar and a dream.”
But this week, for every American who sees buying a ticket as a waste of good money, there's another who is eager to be parted from his or her earnings. The pace at which Mega Millions tickets have been selling is phenomenal. Since Tuesday, Mr. Hoover estimates, people have spent about $600 million on tickets – and perhaps as much as $1.2 billion since the last winner on Jan. 24. In Massachusetts, tickets were selling at the rate of 14,000 per minute on Friday, says Beth Bresnahan, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Lottery.
“This is unprecedented,” says Ms. Bresnahan. “The scale of this thing is driving the increase. People are coming out of the woodwork.”