Lottery tickets are sold by state governments and the proceeds are generally allocated for specific purposes. In the United States, most lotteries are run by individual states and the federal government, though some states participate in national games like Powerball and Mega Millions. Several state-regulated online lottery platforms allow players to make secure purchases for in-state instant win and drawing games.

In New York, you can play games like Take5 to win a jackpot prize of up to $100,000 by correctly guessing five numbers. The winning numbers are drawn every day at 2:30pm and 10:30pm. The New York Lottery app also gives players access to the latest results.

Despite the social stigma attached to gambling, many Americans like the idea of becoming millionaires by chance. In fact, lottery tickets account for roughly a quarter of the money spent on gambling in the country. But it isn’t just the inextricable human urge to gamble that drives people to buy lottery tickets. It’s the fact that the huge jackpot prizes dangle in front of them.

But are these super-sized jackpots really good for society? As Cohen explains, when America first started using the lottery to raise money for its institutions of higher learning in the early seventeenth century, it was largely defined politically by an aversion to taxation. That made it a popular alternative to paying taxes, and indeed, Harvard and Yale were partly funded by lottery money, as was the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War.