This study by the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems at McGill University finds “approximately one-fifth of parents reported buying a lottery ticket for their children” in Canada.
How Gambling Impacts Democratic Values
Massachusetts Lottery takes from poor to give to rich
The Massachusetts Lottery is, what the author of this Boston Globe article calls, “a Robin Hood in reverse”. Like most lotteries, it generates the most profit from poorer communities, filled with impoverished people who feel the only way to get out of their dead-end situation is to get lucky on the lottery. However, these poor communities receive back in aid a fraction of what they put in through revenue, while richer towns enjoy much higher levels of aid than they contribute to the system.
The libertarian argument against government-sponsored casinos
“When the state joins forces with private industry in order to sponsor and propagate an old human vice, the results can devastate both civic life and, in the long run, the civic purse as well.” This is the conclusion made by author Harvey Silvergate after a visit to Atlantic City with his son. His libertarian values would, one would think, compel him to support as many casinos as the free market would support. However, this visit to an Atlantic City casino showed him the despair which problem gamblers feel as they drain their savings in slots. The surrounding community, with its old, rundown, dilapidated buildings further convinced him of casinos’ harmful effects. Ultimately he makes the conclusion that this is not so much a private business as it is a government-sponsored industry that causes social dislocation and poverty. The story he tells is gripping and the poverty he describes is palpable. The article is a must-read for anyone looking into the issues of government-sponsored casino gambling.
Ralph Nader on why casinos are the wrong direction for America
The nation’s most respected consumer advocate, Ralph Nader, speaks powerfully about how government-sanctioned gambling lowers our standard of living and exploits and defrauds citizens.
Gambling Nation: A Democracy of Risk for Risk’s Sake
Below is a compelling, hard-hitting column by Esquire’s Charlie Pierce about what it means to turn America into a casino republic, declaring “The United States of America is now nothing more than a place where you gamble.”
Behind an Army of Lobbyists, an Instant Force in Gambling
There is no grassroots movement anywhere in America calling for regional casinos. The push is completely driven by very powerful corporate gambling interests that are dominating state legislatures across the U.S. This New York Times story highlights just one example of how this highly corrupt process works to force casinos into communities. It focus on the lobbying practices of Genting in New York State, a massive corporate gambling power based overseas.
The Criminalization of Slot Machines in the 20th Century Was Effective Policy
This TIME Magazine article from 1953 offers a glimpse at the period following World War II when states recriminalized slot machines. “Though the state legally controlled them, the slots acted, increasingly, like a virus in the body politic, dividing Idaho citizens against each other, changing the shape of towns, altering social life, wounding business and giving whole communities a surrealistic civic philosophy.” By legalizing slot machines, the government was still unable to control the negative impacts: restaurants, doctors, dentists and other local businesses began to go broke as a result of slot clubs siphoning patrons and their money away and “as a result, in rapid and indignant succession, Idaho’s bigger cities began banning slot machines.”
Government’s Monopoly of Commercialized Gambling
Yale Law School’s Stephen Carter wrote a terrific column in April 2011 on state lotteries. Carter writes: “Why on earth do we allow the government to hold a monopoly on the very profitable (if rather disgusting) business of persuading the suffering to part with their money in the hope of a munificent return they are all but certain never to see? In other words, why is the government in the lottery business at all?”
The state lottery has been a spectacular failure and more and more intelligent thinkers like Carter are speaking the truth about it.
Government-Run Gambling Bigger Than Organized Crime
Should our democratic institutions be competing with organized crime for revenue? Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Monica Yant Kinney discovers an important distinction between illegal underground gambling and government-sponsored predatory gambling: “Bookies don’t prey on gamblers. Bookies don’t solicit. Gamblers find them.”
This lies in stark contrast to state governments using taxpayer money to solicit our fellow citizens to play the lottery and providing tax incentives to allow casinos to come to town.
The Lottery: A New England Horror Story
In this 1990 article from New England Monthly, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch gives an overview of the development of state lotteries in New England and the danger this poses to our democracy.