People I once knew

The lottery. (The real lottery, I mean, not the short story about stoning people.)
There's a family of tropes that the lottery is a tax on poor people, that the lottery is a tax on people who don't understand statistics, that the lottery is a tax on poor people because they don't understand statistics, etc. (See e.g. <http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1744#comic>.) What I want to know is, is this true? It's well established that the lottery is more popular among minorities and poor than among the general population, but it's not obvious to me that this is due to a lesser understanding of statistics, both because (1) it's not obvious to me that minorities and the poor have a lesser understanding of statistics and (2) it's not obvious to me that lottery-playing is a result of not understanding statistics. It just seems very patronizing to me to assume that it is. Lottery-playing seems no less rational than plenty of things that middle-class people do (myself included), and presumably that upper-class people do (though most of my knowledge of the upper class comes from television, so mostly I just know that they're witty and attractive and that every woman wants to marry them, but not for their money).

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