It's true, the chances of ever winning the lottery are astonishingly small and lottery companies are increasingly making it harder to win by making little mathematical tweaks that make it magnitudes of difficulty harder. It annoys me when the "second place" prizes are also ridiculously small when they can be pretty similar in difficulty to win on as well. However, as you've stated, whenever I buy a lottery ticket it is to go to bed and dream of the tiniest possibility of waking up to complete financial freedom. The possibilities that winning millions would open up in your life are endless and there are very few similar shortcuts to wealth, so for a few dollars every so often it is nice to think of winning so big.
This is interesting! Can you, please, explain more how can
lottery companies make the chance of winning smaller? I don't know which lottery game you are talking about exactly but I believe they all have the same concept. This is why I can't understands how this can be done!
Also, regarding the prize for the second place, as far as I know the odds of winning the second place are way higher than hitting the jackpot and winning the first place. So, it's normal if the prize is smaller.