Here is a topic about which I know almost nothing: the Lottery. I’ve never bought a lottery ticket. I don’t feel any need to buy one. Emotionally, buying a lottery ticket feels to me to be the same as simply throwing money away. I had a brother, who is now deceased, who used to play the lottery. He didn’t see it at all the way I did. As far as I can tell he believed that one day he would win big. Maybe he did. He died of a sudden, massive heart attack. As near as we can figure he died quickly with a minimum amount of pain and anxiety. Maybe that is a big win. It doesn’t seem like it to me, however. Then again, we didn’t always see the world in the same way.

The basic structure of the Powerball lottery is pretty simple. People buy tickets. Tickets are sold in 45 of the 50 United States, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Not all of the proceeds from ticket sales go into the prize. The states share in the profits from the game. Each ticket has six numbers on it. To win, a ticket must match all six numbers. The odds of winning are very, very low. They change with the number of people who purchase a ticket, but they are never good. That means that there are many weeks when no one wins. Each time there is no winner, the jackpot grows for the next drawing. Currently there has been no winner in 39 consecutive drawings. The prize has grown really, really large. The pre-tax amount is $1.6 billion. The previous largest prize was $1.59 billion, split between three players in 2016. Winners can opt for a single large payment, with enormous tax consequences, or a 30-year annuity, with enormous tax consequences. States that have income taxes benefit from having the winner reside within their borders, as well as from the proceeds of the lottery. The odds of winning the current prize are one in 292 million, according to Powerball officials.

One in 292 million doesn’t seem like very good odds. Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are less than one in a million. Odds of dying in a plane crash are one in 9821. A car crash is more likely: 1/107. About one in five deaths is caused by heart disease. And the odds of having some form of cancer are about 1 in 2 in the United States. That last one isn’t quite what it seems, however. There are many forms of cancer that are very survivable. Having cancer doesn’t mean you will die of cancer. I’ve already lost that lottery, though the particular form of skin cancer that I’ve had is rarely life threatening and in my case the lesions were small and easily removed.

Statistical odds are pretty much meaningless, especially when they are so wild. On in 292 million simply doesn’t mean much to the people who buy Powerball tickets. They reason, “someone has to win the prize eventually.” Even if three winners have the chosen numbers, a third of $1.6 billion is a lot of money.

I see it differently. Let’s say that the winner is a person who lives below the poverty line. Somehow it seems like that would be better than having the winner be someone who already has wealth. Let’s say that there are five winners this time around and that they are all living in poverty. After the payout and the taxes and the challenges of financial management of sudden wealth, that still leaves 42.31 million people living in poverty in the United States. You’d think that $1.6 billion might have some impact on poverty, but the lottery isn’t a good way to get value out of that money if you are talking about reducing the number of people living in poverty.

I, of course, have no idea what a billion dollars is about. A billion is a lot more than a million. To put numbers in perspective, you can do the math on seconds. Each tick of the clock in my study is one second. A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years. To put it another way, to spend a billion dollars in 30 years requires expenditures of over $91,000 per day. I have no idea what such an amount of money might mean. I do know that the world is probably better off with me not being in charge of such an amount. Then again, I’m a pretty happy person. I know a lot of people who have more money than I who aren’t as happy. Elon Musk is reported to be the richest person in the world with assets of $203 billion. He’s gone through two divorces. I had the good fortune to meet the love of my life early in life and have never had to go through the pain of a divorce. I also don’t get attacked on social media every day, and the press pretty much ignores me when I go about my life. I have no inclination to switch places with Musk. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that he isn’t going to buy a Powerball ticket. At least we agree on one thing.

There is another thing about a $1.6 billion lottery prize. The odds are against anyone actually seeing a billion dollars of prize money. Almost all winners of really big lottery prizes opt for upfront cash instead of the annuity. That means they get less. If a single winner opts for the upfront cash in tonight’s Powerball drawing, the estimated draw is $782.4 million, which is still a lot of money.

Big winners still have about the same odds of getting struck by lightning, or of being in a car crash. Their odds of being in an airplane crash go up slightly because they tend to travel by airplane more than the average person.

And, when all is said and done, there will still be 42.31 million people living in poverty tomorrow.