OVER THE RAINBOW

Powerball, the lottery game that will provide you with more millions than you could possibly spend or, perhaps, not, goes on sale today in Maine, making this state the 27th to join. Predictable doubts have emerged with the game as well, and though there are lots of reasons to avoid playing, the doubters largely miss these points and instead rely on dreary common sense when trying, without hope, to keep Mainers from playing.

A typical warning is that the odds of winning Powerball are 76 million to 1, but if instead you invested $2,000 a year in an IRA, at the stock market’s historic growth rate of 10.6 percent, you would have about $3 million after 50 years. This is offered by people who are under the impression it is relevant to the situation, that if you weren’t playing Powerball you would stick your dollars in a jar on the kitchen counter until it was time to buy an IRA. Another problem, of course, is that you might be dead in 49 years and miss out on enjoying those savings.

A second example of this sort of advice comes from Dennis Bailey of the antigambling CasinosNo! group, who said in a recent news story the state was playing its residents for “suckers” with Powerball because, “Your chances are far greater that you’ll find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

If the chances of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow were 76 million to 1, every time a rainbow appeared in the Maine skies, thousands of Mainers would drive around madly trying to find the end of it. But the odds in the rainbow-chasing game are 76 million to zero, so no one looks. That is the essential difference between the two: the minuscule chance of actually winning an enormous Powerball jackpot is worth the $1 in entertainment value. That people do not stop at $1 and that many who play regularly cannot afford to spend their money for this entertainment is true, but telling them they aren’t getting their money’s worth is not persuasive.

Powerball will arrive, sensible arguments for not playing it will be ignored, it will produce added wealth for the state, which is taking no gamble at all in introducing it, and people will lose some of their grocery money. Its demise awaits not more arguments against it but the next shiny new game with an even bigger pot of gold for someone.