Okay, according to this article[1], you need a "nest egg" of $2 million to have a retirement income of $80k per year. In 2021[2] the median household income was about $70k. The average household size[3] in the US is currently around 2.5 people, so let's round this up to 3. The poverty line[4] for a 3 person household in 2022 is roughly $23k, for 2 people it's roughly $18k.
Let's say we want a nest egg allowing a two-person household to have a retirement income of $60k: quite a bit below the median household income in the US but still considerably above the poverty line, a net positive considering you don't need to work for a living as long as you don't plan for either one of you to live for more than 30 years.
$60k is 75% of $80k, so that nest egg shrinks down to a mere $1.5 million dollars. But you should aim to live on 80% of your pre-retirement salary, so your pre-retirement salary should therefore have been $75k. In order to get there you need to set aside 15% of that $75k household salary (including any 401(k)s) every year, or just shy of $12k, leaving you with $62k actual income after retirement savings or $5.2k per month for the household (you, your spouse, any children, rent, cost of living and savings for emergencies like health, maintenance or replacements).
If that doesn't sound so bad, consider that this is for someone living just above the median and aiming to maintain a similar standard of living. The further your household income is below the median, the more painful those 15% will be and the only reward will be to get to live in the same level of distress just with a more reliable stable income (assuming it doesn't get eaten up by other expenses you couldn't save for or that arise as a consequence of your already low standard of living, e.g. health issues).
So if that's the "best case" prospect, can you imagine why the chance to become a "millionaire" (and remember: a $2 million nest egg represents a $80k retirement income, a good $10k above the median household income) might be more enticing to a significant chunk of the population than the safer more reliable investments that will at best help them maintain their meager standard of living as long as they don't have any unforseen emergencies?
The exact numbers here are entirely irrelevant. Jobs with higher income generally also offer better options for investment and retirement plans, jobs with low income may not even offer a 401(k). Low income also means any expense represents a larger percentage of your income because costs don't scale linearly, especially when it comes to essentials (e.g. gas prices are the same for everyone and a cheap car may actually get worse mileage and require more frequent repairs compared to a newer model that may still be in warranty).
As an addendum, as I don't want to add even more text to this reply itself, my point is that while gambling is clearly an irrational investment strategy as the odds are so bad compared to conventional forms of investment (some of which are at least guaranteed to not incur any losses beyond inflation), it's entirely understandable why it's appealing if the alternative is to be stuck on the lower end of the income range (or even dropping into welfare) forever.
While wealthy "whales" exist and the gambling industry likes to portray them all as Saudi oil barons with more money than sense so you don't feel bad about them sinking a few billion dollars into gambling as extravagance because they still come out as billionaires, the truth is the most reliable source of income are people (and for cultural reasons especially men) with a low income who see no career path to "striking it big" and think gambling will work for them because beating the literal odds feels more managable than doing so at the job market.
On my way to work I drive past four gambling halls, including two sports betting places. There's another sports betting machine at a nearby bodega. The cars parking in front of these places aren't fancy, they're average at best. The people coming in and out of these places or discreetly trying to smoke outside without being identified by people who might know them are mostly typical workers, more likely to be immigrants than not, often enthusiastically chatting about their dead-end side-hustles or acquaintances of acquaintances who have "struck it big" but often just end up "reinvesting" their gains and losing it all again.
The gambling halls and sports betting places don't provide entertainment. They provide empty promises. Especially with sports betting the gamblers understand it as a game of skill rather than chance and they think they just have to do good enough to become millionaires.
This sort of analysis is common in the financial "advice" (sales, really) industry, but makes no sense. You shouldn't start from your income while working, but from your expected expenses. For example my 3 person household has about 40k/yr in expenses, which is more-or-less independent of my income, given that I make more than that. Once our mortgage is paid off, that will be more like 28k. The average social security benefit is ~18.5k/yr, so that leaves a 10k/yr shortfall at our current lifestyle, which only requires 250k in retirement savings at the 4% rate you're using. Our discretionary spending has inflated somewhat in the past couple years (some of it has been "buy-it-for-life" stuff like furniture), but my wife and I as a 2 person household could comfortably live on just SS once the house is paid off. We'd just be living like we did in our 20s again, and we were perfectly comfortable then. We'd also still have the things we've bought over the years, so really we'd be more comfortable. Presumably there will be some additional health expenses as we age, but as far as I know Medicare isn't so bad that we'd need anywhere close to $80k income in retirement. That additional $10k/yr lifestyle above SS could also be covered by $100/month contributed over 40 years at 7% real returns.
So assuming you can put together a down payment (possibly 3.5% for FHA loans), and assuming you believe in the long term stability of US economic conditions in general, the boring, responsible path to a quiet, comfortable life continues to work even below median income levels.
(This also assumes good health for most of your life. Certainly many people get the short end of the stick there, but many more simply don't take care of themselves.)
