Deval Patrick, watch this show - I caught the A&E "
Intervention" marathon today and there were a couple episodes showcasing people with gambling addictions. Our beneficent governor should see what he's getting Massachusetts into when he pries his attention away from the all-important revenue windfall. Two not-so-insignificant facts: millions of Americans are problem gamblers and one-fifth of those will attempt suicide.
2 comments:
"Liquor is dangerous to public safety because it creates poverty, it cultivates crime, it establishes social conditions generally which are a burden to society."
--Clergyman John H. Holmes, 1924
"The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent."
--Preacher Billy Sunday, 1920
"Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government's benevolent providence to the protection of the individual's body only? Is is not the harm a man can inflect on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and listening to bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs."
--Ludwig von Mises, 1949
Well, I guess my objection is not so much that casinos should be banned but rather the government should not be making partnerships with the devil. Once the money starts rolling in to the state coffers, the government has been backed into a position where it has to advocate vice.
I've made a similar point before with cigarette taxes. Oh, the government hates those smokers but heaven help 'em if the smokers decided to quit. Thus the government *really* wants you to smoke just a little.
I don't smoke or gamble. Will I feel relief that some poor slot jockey will be voluntarily paying taxes I would otherwise be paying? No, I won't. I'd rather see Beacon Hill make some kind of effort to fit the size of the state government to the revenues that they're able to bring in.
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