I'll bet you a dollar that none of your numbers come up.

I continue to be fascinated by the lottery players.

There's a little store near my home that sells tickets in all shapes, sizes and denominations. Almost every morning I stop in for some little thing and invariably there's someone in front of me making up the ticket order...

"I'll have one Flamingo Bingo, two Win for Life, two Red Hot Slingo, one Raise the Stakes ..." On and on it goes until they either spend all the money in their hand or run out of catchy lottery names, whichever comes first. Usually the money thing comes first.

They even had a Mother's Day ticket. "I love you mom. Here's ... absolutely nothing!" I considered getting one for mom, but then I sat down until the feeling passed. I've heard about people who give lottery tickets as gifts or leave them as tips at restaurants. Most of your fine dining establishments appreciate the lottery ticket as a tip.

I'd never give one away because I feel like if I bought the thing and actually thought it would win, why would I want to give it away? So, you're giving somebody something that you logically figure is worth zero, otherwise you'll feel like a schmuck for giving it away.

Mostly, the lottery is a tax on the poor. Poor people (and some optimistic middle class) buy the things, then sit around until the drawing fantasizing about what they'll do when they "hit the lottery". Usually, the lottery hits them. Then they buy more tickets.

If you don't believe it's a tax, then read where the New Jersey Lottery tells us the money goes:

For more than 35 years, the Lottery has been helping to meet New Jersey's needs and to improve the lives of countless Garden State residents.

I'll bet you'd get the same explanation from the Bureau of Taxation if you asked them where your tax dollars go. That's a fascinating explanation, since New Jersey has the highest property tax rates in the country, third highest auto insurance rates and a 7 percent sales tax. Imagine how rotten it would be if we didn't have all that lottery money?

But we love to gamble. It's the best way we can think of to get money without having to work for it, and we're all for that. Having the state sponsor it makes it sound legitimate, even though it's kind of like the numbers runner on the corner, except the state does their drawings on TV.

Our government has tried to make America sex and color blind through legislation, but it can do nothing to change the effects of ones social class. They try to help with “stimulus payments” and other little things like legalized numbers games (lotteries) but those things offer little to poor people than hope, and hope is the last vestige of the desperate man.

That reminds me, the Mega Millions drawing is worth $166 million this week. The odds are 1 : 175,711,536.

I could buy 166 million tickets and still not break even.