Imagine for a moment that you’ve been commissioned to prepare a video for a time capsule meant to perfectly summarize the state of the United States economy in January 2009, and you’ve only got thirty seconds of tape to do it in. It sounds impossible, I know. And yet, for purely practical reasons, the New York State Lottery has managed to nail it. Perfectly. Behold:

Our cheerful Everyman mailroom worker demonstrates, with the flair and subtlety of a young Jimmy Stewart, that in our current society the wealth, power, and immunity from culpability continue to rest in the hands of a greedy and callous elite few. Yet the little guy can always smile with the hope of finding the absurdly improbable luck necessary to win a lottery jackpot. Best of all, lottery winners can become rich without sullying their integrity in the manner of the corporate executive swine. And hope is the most important thing we have. Because it’s the only thing we have left. Because those rich fuckers destroyed our economy. Now get off the couch, slap on a smile, and go do some gambling!