principles

Who determines good and bad gambling?

by Michelle Minton on May 19, 2009

in Odds & Ends

slots

Maryland does not have enough money in the budget to pay for the publicly funded programs they have built into the system over the last decade. Politicians are unwilling to cut programs and they don’t want to raise taxes lest they incur the ire of voting residents.

What is the solution to this apparent paradox? Well, for many years, Md. politicians have pushed legalizing and taxing slot machines as a way to bridge the gap. One of the newest rhetorical weapons they’ve paraded around to persuade opponents is by claiming that tax money from slots will be used to help the failing horse racing industry.

As Mark Fisher pointed out in his May 7th Washington Post article “A Matter of Money, Not Md.” the residents of the state don’t seem to be fooled by the flowery talk used to justify legalizing slots, which essentially says slots are a necessary evil to save the greater good–horse racing. This begs the question: why is betting on horse races romantic and worthy of protection while gambling at slot machines is seen as a sleazy stepping stone to crime and addiction?

Fisher’s article rightly paints this desire to “save”  the horse racing industry as completely bogus on all accounts: the government should not appropriate money from one industry or its citizens in order to save another industry. However, their is no reason that slots shouldn’t be legalized and allowed in malls or any other private location where operates can place their machines.

What gives the government the right to tell adults that gambling on horses is fine but slots are off limits?

Malls,  cathedrals to wasteful spending, have ATM machines providing easy access to cash and plenty of opportunity to spend it on useful items as well as opportunity to spend it in ways some might find wasteful.  Teens can buy $100 pairs of jeans, candy, drop unlimited amounts of quarters into arcade games. Who is to say that spending $10 on a movie ticket is any less of a gamble than putting a quarter in a slot machine? While the government shouldn’t be in the business of rescuing businesses consumers have no interest in, it also shouldn’t stand in the way of goods and services that consumers do want–regardless of how much tax money it could garner.

Online gambling increases despite “ban”

by Michelle Minton on March 13, 2009

in Odds & Ends

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank. But there is at least one reason to throw him a scrap of praise: He took a principled stand opposing attempts to ban internet gambling and he’s apparently sticking with it. Sure, he doesn’t apply the same principles consistently and throughout his policy decisions, but when it comes to gambling on the internet he’s the only lawmaker calling it like it is.

After the shamefully vague Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) passed in the late night hours (buried in the unrelated Port Safety Act) before congress recessed, Frank immediately came out against it, “The fundamental point is this,” Frank declared in statement on his website, “If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn’t add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit.”

Since its passage, an ever increasing number of academics, politicians, and industry members have come out against UIGEA. The arguments of those opposing UIGEA have varied, but a popular and effective argument in light of the economic crisis is the potential for tax revenue that congress might draw from the lucrative online gaming industry. Barney Frank who will reintroduce a measure to repeal UIGEA, legalize and tax internet gaming as any other legitimate business, again had principled words for his fellow lawmakers using tax revenue as an excuse.

“Has it become the role of this Congress to prohibit any activity that an adult wants to engage in voluntarily if it doesn’t add to the GDP or make us more competitive?” Frank stated. Later he asserted that UIGEA was unlikely to prevent online gambling, certainly not of those who abuse it. “Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol; it doesn’t work for gambling.”

Frank, and others asserting the ineffectiveness of UIGEA seem to have be right.  Focus on the Family, the conservative organization that had been a staunch supporter of UIGEA was forced to admit that it isn’t tempering gambling at all and that, in fact, gambling on the internet has increased since its passage.

The principle is simple, if an activity is legal in some cases and people want to do it, the government can try to stop them but all it will do is create a black market where there aren’t any consumer protections. Like the prohibition of alcohol before it, consumer bans just don’t work. Like Frankie said, if American adults want to gamble in the privacy of their home, with their own funds, nobody (especially not Congress which is gambling with trillions in tax payer money at the moment) should have the right to stop them.