Stop Predatory Gambling

Everyone was greedy

by Les

The world’s most famous something-for-nothing schemer Bernie Madoff said in a recent interview from his North Carolina prison that “everyone was greedy” when referring to his clients who lost billions of dollars.

Madoff’s statement better describes what is broken about our government today. We are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression following a decade of phony prosperity. Our country has a shrinking middle class largely because of high levels of personal debt. Governments everywhere are on the brink of bankruptcy after years of undisciplined spending on unsustainable budgets. Yet the popular response by many political officials (and a few in the media) is to promote lottery tickets on every corner, build casinos on Main Street and if some in Congress get their way, bring Las Vegas into every home in America with a computer, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Of course, all of it is being underwritten by billionaire gambling interests spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and public relations.

What government incentivizes gradually shapes the national character. During the Great Depression, government was in a severe budget crisis, it needed to put people to work and it had a world war to fund. The country’s leaders challenged the citizenry to act together and buy savings bonds, ultimately spurring massive economic growth in which nearly everyone prospered. We now call the people who grew up in that era “The Greatest Generation” because they acted with a sense that we are all in this together.

Today, the daily voice of government to most Americans is casino and lottery advertising, relentlessly pushing people to lose their cash by dangling the false hope they can make money by not having to work for it. More than one out of five citizens now believe the best way to secure their financial future is to play the lottery. In the process, we have created an emerging national ethic of phony prosperity, living beyond our means, cutting corners and distrust. And none of this will meaningfully change until we end the government program of casinos and lotteries as we know it.