Lotto economics  William “Bud” Post, who won a $16.2 million
jackpot in Pennsylvania, wound up dying in poverty.  In
Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, Arthur C. Brooks of the American
Enterprise Institute offers some truths about state lotteries
and the U.S. economy.  The truth he doesn’t utter (but should)
is one that I speak to anyone who will listen: You can’t
win. Statistically speaking, any one individual’s chance of
winning a big prize is zero. Someone will win, but it will be
someone else.  But he makes the broader point that even if you
win, you lose:  (H)itting the jackpot generally leads to
unhappiness. A famous 1978 study of major lottery winners in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that while
the winners experienced an immediate happiness boost right after
winning, it didn’t last. Within a few months, their happiness
levels receded to where they had been before winning. As time
passed, they found they were actually less happy than they had
been before winning.  Mr. Brooks relat