Ah yes, the lottery

The New York Lottery is pulled every week.  Encompassing 44 multi-state jurisdictions, the Mega Millions Lottery and Powerball Lottery are weekly games.  One of the highest prizes was $650,000,000.  However, the usual odds of winning are 1 in 175,700,000 people (half the USA population).  The NYS lottery was "supposed to be" for funding the public schools... and we can see how well that's going!  But, it was a nice sales pitch--"It's for the children!"  (just like the sales pitch of engraving on the Statue of Liberty to lure cheap labor).
     The interesting--perhaps glaring--aspect is that nobody accounts for where all that money goes.  I imagine that if routed properly, this republic nation of ours could have plenty of funds for public works,  civic improvement projects, parks, school standards, et cetera.  The lottery tickets can only be bought with cash, and my experience with ANY business that deals in cash is that the money is never reported/accounted for accurately.  (More-so than your local Chinese grocery store, the lotteries are HUGE collectors of income).  Most winners choose the upfront-cash option, so the Lottery Consortiums and government take back about half (which should be accounted for in tax breaks for the rest of us).  The other thing to consider is... how much money the Lotteries took in?  Lets say the NYS Lottery is $10 million dollars.  What if 14 million people bought $1 tickets?  The winner chooses the lump-sum winnings (half the value) of $5 million, and the Lottery and government keep $9 million!
     What a great way to raise money whenever you want!  If you suddenly need $150 million (and oil or currency exchanges aren't fast enough), you can just forestall a winning Mega Millions until the jackpot is $300 million.  At $2 per ticket, if half the American population plays, you'll probably get more than $300 million and when the winner(s) take the immediate payment, you can keep the rest... and repeat the cycle the next month or a few months later.  Who says there's a recession?