Progressives Pin Hopes on Sports Betting

Gambling revenue is a pipeline of money flowing from the poor and vulnerable to the affluent and educated. It is highly regressive and amounts to a tax on stupidity.
Progressives Pin Hopes on Sports Betting
By: George Noga – June 24, 2018

          MLLG has a strong libertarian bent and opposes banning any activity undertaken freely by adults. Hence, we are okay with the Supreme Court decision permitting states to legalize sports betting. Nonetheless, sports wagering joins lotteries, slots and their ilk in the pantheon of schemes to exact more money for the state from its poorest and most vulnerable citizens. Following is the back story about state sponsored gambling.

Sports betting impetus comes from blue states. New Jersey, a fiscally irresponsible state, was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case. Progressive politicians and their public sector union sidekicks conspired to seek another desperate fix for their failing blue state governance model with its unsustainable taxing, spending and borrowing.

State sponsored gaming is dishonest at its core. Lotteries are frauds from inception as they invariably are sold to voters as a means to increase spending on education – all the while its advocates (except gullible teachers) know full well that is a lie. Florida instituted a lottery in 1986 devoted entirely to education. Yet real per pupil spending on schools has actually decreased since 1986 as lottery money simply supplanted other funds. The same pattern occurs everywhere lotteries have been instituted.

Gambling is a pipeline of money from the poor to the rich. In the argot of economics, gambling is an inferior good, i.e. demand is higher on the lower rungs of the economic ladder than on the upper rungs. The poor spend seven times more money than the well off and impoverished neighborhoods have triple the lottery vendors per capita. It is the most regressive tax and is tantamount to a tax on stupidity. Gambling revenue is a pipeline of money flowing from the poor and susceptible to the affluent and educated.

State sponsored gaming is a monopoly and a fool’s game. There is no competition and its payout is worse than when organized crime controlled it. The mafia paid out 60% in bolita and in after-tax dollars. The present value of a lottery payout is around 30% after tax – half that of the mob. It is an unfair exploitative wager and a sucker’s bet.

State advertising encourages destructive behavior. Although MLLG believes adults should be free to gamble, it is wrong for the state to promote it. They use dishonest and deceptive advertising promoting a harmful, addictive activity. The state restricts advertising for tobacco and alcohol. What’s next; will the state run ads promoting legal marijuana? Lottery sales are fueled by a stream of slick advertising encouraging suckers and glorifying a fool’s game all the while devaluing hard work and thrift.

Gaming sends the wrong message to our children. It signals that good things in life come from a winning lottery ticket, not from knowledge, initiative, work and savings. Lottery numbers already scroll across our TVs and devices. With sports betting, this will explode with wagers on every possible event – telling our kids this is important.

Legal gambling can be fixed. State advertising must be banned and honest disclosures about the odds and payouts must be prominently displayed. Lotteries and other forms of gaming should be privatized and opened to competition. Let private vendors compete to offer the best odds; even the mafia offered odds twice as good as the state.

       State sponsored gaming exposes the ugly underbelly of progressivism. States run by liberals (and some conservatives) shamelessly exploit their poorest and most vulnerable citizens to feed their unsated appetite for money and power. In Florida, lottery money comes disproportionately from the poorest precincts but goes to fund Bright Futures scholarships, 90% of which go to highly educated, affluent families.

       Progressives claim to be for minorities and the poor. All they really care about is clinging to power. They are addicted to higher taxes even if it means eating their own.

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