A lot of people I know, myself included, would take the lump sum.
You know what the tax rate, even including penalties, today when you get it. There has been a big push lately to "increase revenue" on the wealthy. You could wind up paying more in taxes down the road on annuity payments, and by more I mean substantially more. Highest tax rate in the 50's was 90'ish percent. France has been pushing hard for a 75% tax rate.
What that annuity lottery you win means, is that you get payments because they invest the winnings, and make money on it, and pay you your cut out of that. Same thing that happens when you invest money in the market... so why not invest yourself, or get a reputable investor who you can work with?
A few years back, a big powerball jackpot was won by a guy in Idaho, who waited like 3 months to come forward, because he retained a lawyer, an investor/financial advisor, and other council. He did so with the stated goal to double his winnings over the next 10'ish years or so.
Me personally, I'd make sure me and family (and I have a big family) were debt free, college paid for all the kids/nephews/nieces, home and car bought, Parents/In-laws retired, etc. Definitely a spread the wealth situation, and that is easier to do with a lump sum than smaller annuity payments.
And what is the dollar going to be worth down the road over the course of the annuity? If you are on these forums, you already have doubts most likely...
Keynes (of Keynesian economic infamy) said:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
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