$1.8 billion lottery lowered a bit after taxes

I've always found the lottery, in any form that it appears, to be a sort of gambling or even just outright theft from the poor. Throughout my life gambling has been either completely illegal or strictly regulated everywhere that I have lived up until now with online gambling mostly being acceptable and casinos being all over the place but the state and inter-state lotteries have always been legal and this has always been sad and amusing to me.

If you or I tried to set up a lottery we would go to jail for the rest of our lives, but when the government does it, that is just fine

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Other than a scratch ticket getting purchased FOR ME on my birthday or something like that, I have NEVER participated in the lottery in any capacity. I have always felt like it is a fool's venture for people that don't understand the statistical near-impossibility of winning. But every time that winning stake just keeps getting larger and larger and one recently was at a staggering $1.8 Billion

You would think that winning something like this would be a guaranteed future for whoever wins it but they are not even being secretive about how this payout isn't all that it appears to be.

For one thing, you were never going to get $1.8 billion. That's horsefeathers right there. This is the amount before taxes and well, we we are looking at this amount of money you can bet your bottom lotto dollar that most of the money is going to go to taxes.

In theory (BS theory that is) you can get the full 1.8 if you take 30 annual payments that increase by 5% every year, whatever that ends up being but I would bet the farm that over 50% of it ends up back in Uncle Sam's pocket or you can take the one time payout of $843.9 million. That's one hell of a drop from $1.8 Billion, don't you think?

That's before taxes as well. So you can imagine that after the various federal, state, and local taxes all take their piece, that this near $850 million would be reduced to around $420 million by the time it is all said and done.

That's a pretty crazy reduction from $1.8 Billion isn't it?

That doesn't seem right in my mind.

I have hear stories about how in other or perhaps most countries that lottery winnings are exempt from taxes and that's the way that it should be in my mind seeing as how it is the government themselves that are running the game. Why should they get 50% of a game that they themselves create? It all just seems so dumb to me.

So you already have a game where it is as likely you will get struck by lighting while riding your shark on the exterior of a test-plane, then you win and the government is going to take half of it?

Then you have the horrible reputation that almost all lottery winners have face in the US and overseas how this massive influx of money almost always leads to despair and death for the people that win it. Maybe this person can be different.

Despite the fact that the government is seriously ripping this person off by taking more than half of the winnings in taxes. $420 million is a hell of a lot of money. Let's watch how quickly the waste it all. It should be fun!

Arkansas law, where the ticket was won, allows winners to remain anonymous for up to 3 years.