Is that true? I remember seeing somewhere that it’s surprisingly flat across income, though obviously a larger proportion of income for lower earners.

> Rich people don't play the lottery.

They do. It's called "incorporating a company" or "investing in the stock market" often with leverage.

I would guess that for a regular non-connected, non-ivy league folk the chance of becoming a billionaire is roughly the same creating a startup vs. the lottery.

At that point it makes sense to play the lottery if you are a "swing for the fences" kind of guy, that's because when odds are kinda the same it makes way more sense to throw 500$ monthly in lottery tickets than throwing 14h/6d/52w yearly in precious time to build a company or reading balance sheets of publicly traded companies

Yeah because they don’t need to and the $3 ticket isn’t a noticeable expense if they do.

that is a distorted interpretation of assumptions

it doesn't matter when rich people play the lottery, whereas it does matter when poor people play the lottery as its a meaningful proportion of their available earnings