I don't feel like looking it up but wasn't it something like $1.2b spent on tickets for that Powerball drawing people were going nuts over last week?
so the issue is people not wanting to educate themselves? look at all the advertisements for the lottery. how much money and effort is put in to exploit people's ignorance and how much of that is put in to help people manage their money. how can you blame people for getting exploited by these aggressive marketing tactics employed by our very own government
Most advertisements you see/hear play on peoples ignorance. Have you ever heard a car commercial encouraging people to pay in cash? Why? Because the dealership makes $1500 MORE in the car if you finance. How about life insurance? Most companies advertising encourage you to buy Whole Life instead of Term because it makes them 4x more while providing you with 3x less life insurance. And on and on it goes. Most of this is why I teach a financial class to people struggling with money so they can great out of their bad habits they've come to learn through repetition and repeated messaging and have financial peace in their life. (Which subsequently helps every other area in life as well)