Where is the US economy headed?

Yeah, alot of it goes to black holes. Some of it for management and advertisement of the lottery to administer it, print tickets, on and on. which is a waste of resources that could be directed toward more fruitful endeavors. Secondly, alot of the people buying tickets are those that can least afford it, thus a tax on the poor. Small winners reinvest in more tickets, thus perpetuating more losses. Big winners are few and far between, and don't help many people. Then whats left over is invested into sometimes questionable or unnecessary government programs. And if the programs are truly that great, such as schools, a real tax should be instituted wherein the people that can best afford the tax would pay most of it. Yes lotteries are government sanctioned gambling, promoting the idea that you can get something for nothing, which is the last thing that government should be doing.

Bottom line, lotteries do not promote efficient use of resources. Money is directed into wasteful and useless endeavors.

A machine with a 98% payback give the house a 2% edge, which is comparable with craps and blackjack. However, there are very few machines in a casino that have this high of a payback percentage. The worst machines can be as low as 75% (giving the house a whopping 25% advantage).

In one the most extraordinary days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch is near an 11th-hour deal with Bank of America to avert a deepening financial crisis while another storied securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation, according to people briefed on the deal.
The dramatic turn of events was prompted by the cataclysm of losses that has shaken the American financial industry over the last 14 months.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. credit squeeze has brought on a "once-in-a-century" financial crisis that is likely to claim more big firms before it eases, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Sunday.

Greenspan told ABC's "This Week" that the situation "is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen, and it still is not resolved and it still has a way to go."

"Indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes," Greenspan said. He predicted that would not happen until early 2009, and said the odds of U.S. recession have gone up in recent months.

One more comment, cyclops, your post supporting lotteries was PATHETIC, PATHETIC, PATHETIC! You can do better than that.