Washington State Lottery has a slogan, "It's good to play!"

It really should be, "Playing the lottery is a pretty terrible idea and we're going to, on average, take your money. If you still want to play, fine, but cheeseburgers really are better than lottery tickets. Wealthy people got wealthy by putting their money into index funds and savings accounts."

> Wealthy people got wealthy by putting their money into index funds and savings accounts.

No they didn't. Not with the implied "as an alternative to lottery tickets".

You could probably find a handful of very well paid and very lottery addicted people constantly blowing up that income. For 99.99[more 9s]% of people, the cost of lottery tickets is not the difference between getting wealthy and not getting wealthy. Even if they buy a bunch every payday.

The vast majority of wealthy people got wealthy by winning the birth lottery.

I know people who have.

Who have what?

Did they become wealthy, end of story? Saving up money to be wealthy, without the rest of the context, is reasonably common.

If they either needed to specifically curate their lottery habits to become wealthy, or if they failed to become wealthy because of their lottery habits, then I'm interested. Because that's the part that I'm betting is quite rare. And it's also the part that needs to be pretty common if the message is supposed to work as a lottery-relevant message.

Turned a modest income into becoming a millionaire by long term investing in a basket of stocks.

Yeah, and I know someone who got rich by buying the lottery. Anecdotal evidence doesn't really prove anything, does it?

80% of American millionaires are self made.

https://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Surprising-Amer...

Consider also that the US was populated by people who arrived with nothing. It wasn't wealthy people that came here from Europe.

Does your use of “self-made" have any concrete definition?

I looked on the related website and the very first blog entry is about how you can teach your children the skills they identify as leading to wealth.

And yet, it appears that the claim is that, in general, people don't get taught these skills, and some people discover them through sheer grit and determination. Which seems contradictory.

And that's putting aside the weird concept where someone who earns 10 million and spends 9 million on stuff, is ranked as the same as someone who lives a meagre life and dies with 1 million in the bank. I'm not sure that concept translates well into the commonly accepted definition of millionaire.

Self made as in did not inherit their wealth.

> people don't get taught these skills

The knowledge is not hard to come by. The book lays it out in simple terms. There's nothing magical about it.

> I'm not sure that concept translates well into the commonly accepted definition of millionaire.

The book is not about a tortured definition of a millionaire or absurd stories about how their wealth was obtained.

It's a quick read and the book is what, a couple bucks? Why not just read it, and then criticize it?

While this book is getting a little long in the tooth (the title needs to be inflation-adjusted now, I suppose), it's still a fascinating read. The authors considered "self-made" to mean that the subject did not receive monetary support from their ancestors as an adult in the form of trusts, inheritance, or other forms of "economic outpatient care" (their term).

This number is going down with every home inheritance and isn’t stable across generations. It’s largely a function of homes being bought for low values appreciating to over $1 million and not a function of labour markets.

It doesn't sound like you read the book. Before dismissing it, I suggest taking a look at it. It costs $1.38. Not really a big investment in something that could make you wealthy. It's well worth it even if it has only one good idea you can use in it.

... or running lotteries

Touché!

Washington State Lottery, "It's good to take your money!"

Someone's job is to increase the numbers.

I think they should spend the lottery money to hire someone who's job is to decrease the numbers.

Yep. They use dark patterns and FOMO to push people.