The odds of winning last night’s Powerball jackpot were one in 292.2 million. You were more likely to be killed by an asteroid (one in 700,000), be struck by lightning while drowning (one in 183 million), or give birth to quadruplets (one in 729,000).
Nonetheless, someone in Massachusetts bought the winning ticket. The annuity option totals $758.7 million, doled out in thirty payments over twenty-nine years. The cash option, which nearly all winners choose, would pay out $443.3 million.
If you’re like most of us, you’re imagining what you would do if you won the lottery. Here’s the ironic part: compared to most of the people who have ever lived, you already have.
You are living in the most prosperous time in human history. As Yuval Harari notes, GDP in America grew between 1950 and 2000 from $2 trillion to $12 trillion. Real per capita income has doubled. Has all this prosperity made us happier? Not at all. Studies show that our subjective well-being levels are the same as they were in the 1950s.
In Peru, Haiti, the Philippines, and Ghana—developing countries dealing with poverty and political instability—the suicide rate is half of prosperous countries such as Switzerland, France, Japan, and New Zealand. South Korea has seen an amazing rise in economic prosperity since 1985, but its suicide rate has quadrupled since then.
Continue reading Denison Forum – Someone won $758.7 million last night
