As anyone who has ever looked at the lottery live macau billboards on the highway knows, there is an inextricable human impulse to play the lottery. It’s not just that people want to be rich, although that is a part of it. It’s also that the game dangles the promise of instant riches in an age of inequality and limited social mobility. The fact that the odds are so incredibly long against winning doesn’t necessarily deter many from playing; in fact, it might even attract them.

Lottery is an ancient practice, with biblical and historical examples going back a long way. The Old Testament instructs Moses to distribute land among the Israelites by lottery, and the Roman emperors used it for other purposes, including distributing slaves during Saturnalian feasts. In modern times, lottery is an important source of revenue in many states. It’s also a popular form of gambling, attracting millions of participants every year.

While it is true that state governments do use the money they raise from lotteries to help with various government services, that’s not really the point of lottery. The main argument, according to experts I’ve interviewed, is that the games serve a greater purpose by promoting the idea that you’re not just losing your money; you’re doing something good for the public by buying a ticket. The same strategy works for sports betting, which has been pushed by states with deficits as a way to reduce their budgets.

The problem with this message is that it’s not true. State governments make a small percentage of their overall budgets from lotteries, and they’re spending more than that on things like education, public parks, and elder care. That’s not to say that these programs don’t have merit; they do, but the point is that lottery revenues are not a silver bullet to solve fiscal problems.

What’s more, state lotteries aren’t above using the psychology of addiction to keep players coming back. Everything about the way they run their games, from the look of the tickets to the math behind them, is designed to keep people hooked. It’s not much different than the strategies of tobacco or video-game companies, but it just isn’t usually done under the auspices of the state.

The modern incarnation of the lottery began in the nineteen sixties, when growing awareness of all the money to be made by running a lottery collided with a crisis in state funding. The immediate post-World War II period had been one in which American states could expand their array of services without especially burdensome taxes on the middle class and working classes, but by the nineteen sixty’s inflation, the cost of the Vietnam War, and a rising population made it increasingly difficult for states to balance their budgets. In these circumstances, many states turned to the lottery for help, imagining that it would allow them to avoid raising taxes or cutting public services. But they were wrong.