The Hagerstown Morning Herald published an editorial this morning supporting the idea of Maryland installing a system of slot machines across the state, from which the state government of course gets a cut:
Here are our thoughts: Maryland needs more revenue and its citizens are already playing slot machines in other states. Not legalizing them here doesn’t mean Marylanders won’t play, but it does mean the state won’t get any share of the revenue.
That is correct, strictly speaking. If the state of Maryland doesn’t set up a system of slot machines to fund its government, that “doesn’t mean Marylanders won’t play.” But Zipf’s principle of least effort tells us that fewer Marylanders will play slots if Maryland doesn’t set up its system, since the number of people who are willing to engage in any activity drops off as the travel distance to that activity increases.
And how does the “we need to do it because the government needs the money” argument sit with you? Let’s look at slots for what it is: it isn’t any sort of skill-based game. People either play because the short-term rush is worth the inevitable long-term loss, or because they’re not smart enough to know that in the long run they will lose. The assertion laid bare is that the state needs to exploit the weakness of gambling addicts and fools because it needs the money.
OK, then, why doesn’t the state of Maryland set up its own government payday lenders, too? Short-term loans with interest rates of 30-40% also exploit the weaknesses of gambling addicts and fools — the mechanism of extraction is just different. Or maybe it could send Three Card Monte hustlers out onto the street and take a cut, too. Or maybe Maryland could start its own state religion and tell all the followers it attracts that Maryland’s angry god demands a tithe as sacrifice.
Or, hey, here’s an idea: if the state of Maryland needs more money to pay for its government programs for Maryland’s residents, why doesn’t it ask for the money? You know, raise taxes and junk. No additional expensive equipment, no processing fees, no middlemen to pay off. No… that would be crazy!
There is not a politician in the nation who will raise taxes no matter how badly they need the money in the public coffers. Politicians who have done that have always lost the next election. The trend now is to raise usage fees–a sort of pay to play thing with the municipality’s public resources. Keeps out the riff raff too.
The gambling industry has been very clever in the way they have played one state against the other. Initially riverboat gambling was established on waterways directly across the state border from major population centers. No state wants the problems that come with gambling–bankrupcies, the underground economy… but they do want the tax revenue, so they put their gambling thing across the state border and voila! they have just exported the social costs to the other state while keeping the tax revenues for themselves. Next, the state they exported the cost of gambling to sees they are suffering the effects of the casino, but don’t have the revenue they need to deal with the problem, so they get their own casino. State after state, they fall like dominos. Iowa was the first state to fall.
Of course casinos don’t actually produce anything, they’re just tollhouses that send the money back to Nevada or where ever, so the money doesn’t get reinvested or spent in the state, but that’s a long term problem and state governors want to solve the short term taxation problem.
The real answer is regional cooperation or regional fund to deal with the social costs of gambling.
So let’s think about this a second.
Tobacco and its proven cancer causing product lines are okay with the government because it gets huge tax revenues from the companies that produce these known health hazards for public (both here and abroad) consumption. Nobody cares about the attendant health costs, as if they don’t exist. Likewise with guns, alcohol gambling (and in some states prostitution) and prescription drugs. So why don’t or fake legislators just stop all the false morality objections and legalize marijuana, coke, and heroin too? They’d make tons of money, put the illegal dealers out of jobs (that’s the argument, but i’m not so sure), and stop the unnecessary jailing of its citizens.
sorry for the spelling and grammar errors
‘or fake legislators’ should be ‘our’ and i forgot a comma between ‘alcohol’ and ‘gambling’