Pity the Peach State.
We always seem to make the top of the worst-of lists and the bottom of the best-of rankings.
And so it is with the lottery.
The Mega-Millions lottery drawing March 30 is for more than $640 million — the largest in North American history.
Understandably, lots of us are putting down a $1 or two — or 20 — in the hopes of being six numbers away from Easy Street.
Alas, Georgia is No. 1 among the states on Bloomberg Rankings' "Sucker Index."
Said Bloomberg: Georgia’s lottery players are the biggest suckers in a nation buying more than $50 billion a year in tickets for state-run games, which have the worst odds of any form of legal gambling.
Ouch!
But wait! There's more.
Georgia spent $3.4 billion on lottery tickets last year. Averaged out it comes to about $470.73 per adult, or one percent of total annual income per adult worker.
But we have a low rate of payouts — 62.9 percent — which is why we're among the top when it comes to suckerdom, explains The Motley Fool.
Now, the odds of winning the Mega-Millions jackpot are 1 in 175,711,536.
Fear not! There are lots of things we stand a better chance of experiencing to become winners, or losers, depending on your perspective.
Odds of:
- Growing up to become president of the U.S.: 1 in 150 million
- Being killed on an airline flight operated by one of the 30 carriers with the best accident safety records: 1 in 29.4 million
- Becoming canonized as a Catholic saint: 1 in 20 million
- Being eaten by a shark: 1 in 11 million
- Being killed in a tornado: 1 in 2 million
- Being born on a Leap Year Day (Feb. 29): 1 in 1,461
- Developing hemorrhoids: 1 in 28
