Inside America's lottery addiction

The Week reports:

What are the chances you'll win?
Infinitesimally small. Ticket holders in the multistate Powerball lottery, for example, have a 1 in 292,201,338 chance of winning the jackpot. That's like putting into a hat the names of nearly everyone in the U.S. and hoping your name is pulled out. Yet the fantasy of getting rich quick is too tempting for many of us to resist. About half of Americans have played the lottery at least once. With a growing array of prize draws, electronic games, and scratch cards available, sales in the 43 state lotteries totaled $70 billion in 2014, or $300 per every American adult — more than was spent on video games, movie tickets, books, and sporting events combined. But there is a huge disparity in how much people spend. Fifty-four percent of ticket sales come from 5 percent of players, who tend to be poor and uneducated.

Entertainment statistics .