Gambling in general is a loser's game, but the games people TYPICALLY play in gambling isn't generational wealth.

What makes the lottery slightly different is "YOLO": yeah on average it is not a good play, but someone presumably wins, and for their one shot in life it gets transformed with generational wealth.

That is: go big or go home.

... well, except that most lottery winners lose it all, but that's a different issue.

To emphasize, I'm not advocating playing the lottery, just that odds don't really account for the biological reality of only getting one life to live.

Some quick back of the envelope calculations suggests that powerball becomes positive estimated value at about 650mil for jackpot or above (though if we want to discount for taxes, lump sum etc, high than that) but obviously that EV is massively weighted towards one very very very rare event