Remember when gambling was unpopular and illegal everywhere?
Then somebody decided it was “free money” that could be used “to fund schools and Indian services”.
In practice, of course, the schools have less money than before and the Indians are just getting by.
Casino owners were the only winners.
And we pretend there are :“no losers” because it’s all optional.
But millions of people lose, some losing everything.
So, what will make the pendulum swing back?
What made gambling unpopular before, so much that it got outlawed?
Gambling became illegal because of moralist paternalistic legislators who “knew what was best for us” and believed we were too dumb to decide for ourselves.
If you want to reverse the trend toward gambling in general, the facts of odds in gambling should be taught in high schools. It has been said that State Lotteries are a tax on people who don’t understand math. It’s the same with casinos, except the money goes to the stockholders instead of the government.
Better technology and auditing. Couldn’t run a Powerball lotto people would trust w/o computer termninals in stores all over town. Couldn’t have Vegas without cheap and fast long distance transit. So long as gambling was “playing cards at the local saloon” it kept it small. That the government encourages gambling with TV ads saying “it supports schools” will tend to increase it.
It was also far more difficult back then to stop what gambling there was. Ban it at saloons? Try and stop it happening in the form of poker in Billy Bob’s basement.
So, what you are saying is “moralist paternalistic legislators who “knew what was best for us” and believed we were too dumb to decide for ourselves” had the right idea?
But remember that there was still gambling when it was illegal, it was just run by the mob. Remember the numbers games? They were just lotteries run by the mafia. Do away with legal lotteries and the illegal ones will pop back up.
No, schools have more money than ever before. Per-pupil primary and secondary education spending has risen two-and-a-half fold, in constant dollars, since 1965 and has never been higher.
Yes ** Freddie the Pig** but 1965 was before the ADA and there was no need to deal with children with special needs. 1965 was before desegrigation, and it was ok to fund african american schools with only the cast-offs. 1965 was well before the computer age, and there was no need for schools to have computers. The chart you show, does not seem to adjust for inflation either. As a matter of fact, this reeks of my grandfather’s fights against allowing teachers a 3% inflation raise because back in his day you could buy a house for 2000$.
Actually, the moralists simply removed gambling from legal trade and added it to the black market, where no taxation happens. It was an unintended gift to organized crime and a kick in the slats to the state’s budget. Very foolish.
The third chart, showing per-pupil expenditure in constant dollars since 1965 (from which I derived the two-and-a-half-fold figure), adjusts for inflation. The second chart, showing expenditure since 1990, does not.
I make no assertion as to what the right level of education funding is, but only point out that one cannot dismiss gambling as one of its revenue sources.
I’d say gambling as it’s currently being run should be self-limiting. People gamble. The government collects more money for schools. Schools teach more math. People stop gambling.
Stake of $250 in Atlantic City at the blackjack tables. Most often, I play six hours and come away with over $175. A few times I’ve lost it all. Once I won over $3000. My average loss, per hour, is $10.
And while I’m playing, I enjoy myself greatly.
Now, contrast this with: last month’s I Vespri Siciliani at the Kennedy Center here in Washington, DC. As a season subscriber, I get a better deal on tickets than the single ticket price, but where we sit (front orchestra) is about $175 per ticket. We should really count Mrs. Bricker’s ticket price as well, since I would never go to the opera alone, but let’s forget that nuance for the moment. Naturally, we don’t go without planning on eating out somewhere nice, and with a reasonable bottle of wine, that’s a $150 ticket. We’ll call it $75 just for me, and recognize that I actually get a bottle of wine that I could buy for $25 our of the deal. So let’s be extremely generous and say the total “experience” cost of the dinner is $50.
That’s a guaranteed loss of $225 every single time. Greater if you figure the opportunity cost and the present value of the money set aside for a season subscription. And of course, for that price I enjoy myself greatly for about six hours.
I have no desire to give up opera. But from where I sit, playing blackjack does not look like a worse decision than attending the opera, mathematically speaking.
If the correct odds were clearly stated, gambling would be less popular.
For instance, the billboards here say the state lottery is up to $3million.
What they really mean is that it yields about half that. If you want the full amount, you have to wait 20 years, which is equivalent to getting half now and investing it in poor-yielding bonds.
When challenged on their trumpeting the wrong number, they always say: Well if you won 1.5 million you’d still be ecstatic, so why quibble. The reason to quibble is that they know darn well that an honest billboard would attract millions of fewer players. Using their logic, they should just pay out 1 million or just 0.5 million, because the winner would still feel lucky.
