25% of the profit<\/a> goes directly into the government\u2019s pocket. Or maybe because Americans still want to play the lottery, despite its proven negative consequences. Maybe it\u2019s just me, but isn\u2019t it the government\u2019s job to save us from ourselves?","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the aftermath of the Powerball Lottery craze, Michaela Dudley discusses the adverse impact the lottery takes on low-income Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[976,1300,1504,1527,1528],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blogs","tag-lottery","tag-regressive-tax","tag-taxes","tag-the-lottery","tag-the-lottery-tax"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Dudley5](\"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Dudley5-image.jpg\")
<\/a>What would you do if you won the lottery?\n\nThis is the dream-inducing question that every lottery-playing American thrives on. But the Lottery is a scam and a terrible institution; it preys on the unattainable hopes of dreamers and feeds on the vulnerable and economically disadvantaged.\n\nNow don\u2019t get me wrong, I understand that there are people who gamble responsibly. And by responsibly, I mean that they grab $100 and truck down to Atlantic City expecting to lose it all. They just want to have fun and know that they would have spent $100 on a night out in Atlantic City, regardless of where they went. I am not one of those people. I can think of 100 other ways to spend that $100 dollars that would lead me to more certain happiness than a slot machine (or, even worse, scratch-off cards).\n\nPeople who enjoy gambling enjoy the uncertainty, the rush. The belief you are going to win feeds the machine and allows the Lottery to thrive. The belief that \u201cyou could be the one\u201d is reflected in USA Today\u2019s