What would be helpful in this discussion is a report on lottery spending per capita, sorted by income level and other demographics. Currently I'm not finding any out there. I do see a study showing that the average amount spent per person in the US is around $200ish (https://lendedu.com/blog/lottery-study-report/), which doesn't sound completely terrible. However, it is very probable that this number masks widespread differences in spending habits.

I do find it problematic that states lean on a gambling game for revenue that (due to the population distribution of typical lottery players) acts as a defacto regressive tax. There's a side of me thinks this is rather exploitative, particularly with the evidence that lottery advertising is strongest in poor neighborhoods. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/powerbull-the-lottery-loves-pov...)

With the recent emphasis in America of pooling together multiple states and tweaking odds to produce these headline-grabbing 9 figure jackpots, one other complaint: it's pretty clear to me that American lotteries fail to prepare winners for the "consequence" of winning... that is, the huge amount of financial planning and protection (even lifestyle and location changes, I'd say, along with how to handle relationships with people you know), that is necessary for having a public-known 9 figure asset base. Even lotteries that reward 6 or 7 figures may come with some shocks, but leaping to that sort of base is a whole other sort of ball game.