Nobody won last night’s Powerball drawing, sending the jackpot soaring to $750 million for the next drawing on Wednesday.

That makes this a good time to remind ourselves that the lottery is a regressive tax disproportionately paid by the poorest Americans. The average adult in the U.S. spends $325 a year on lottery tickets, 63% of which goes to prizes, the rest of which goes to state and local governments.

Powerball is nothing more than a non-profit administered regressive tax disproportionately paid by those with little disposable income, relying on a steady base of gambling addicts to fund less spectacular drawings. Lotteries were illegal for most of the 20th century, and have only been re-legalized over the past half century because state and local governments needed revenue.

Additionally, anyone who has played the Powerball lottery for longer than a few years has likely noticed a dramatic spike in the number of huge jackpots lately. That’s no statistical anomaly — it’s the direct result of a 2016 rule change that reduced the already astronomically low odds of winning.

The rule was changed with the goal of producing more spectacular, $100 million-plus jackpots to generate publicity and motivate those who don’t normally participate to purchase tickets. Considering the $750 million up for grabs on Wednesday, this strategy seems to be working.

No matter who gets rich in any one drawing, the real benefactors of our national lottery system are the wealthiest among us who avoid paying higher taxes as a result of lottery revenues.

Consider how unpopular it would be if Governor Gavin Newsom proposed cutting taxes for the largest corporations in California and balancing the budget by increasing income taxes on the same residents who regularly purchase lottery tickets.

The magic of the lottery is that it distracted from a similar redistribution of wealth to take place, as our wealthiest individuals and corporations have paid fewer and fewer taxes in the decades following its re-implementation and growth.