PSYCHOSCAPES: Gambling with our kids future

Gambling with our children’s future

NH has done it again: Increasing our gambling addiction rather than passing a broad-based tax.

NH has a checkered history. In 1964, we were the first state in the union to legalize a state lottery, patting ourselves on the back because it gave back a portion to educate our children. Of course, that made no noticeable difference: we were dead last among all states in state funding for public education before the lottery – and we are still dead last today.^⁠1

Regrettably, our public school students are destined to face even more challenging times ahead now that Governor Sununu and his libertarian educational czar, Frank Edelblut, have begun siphoning off part of the funding pot to students going to private school. But I digress. Back to gambling.

Not content with what we’ve already done, lawmakers are considering a range of new gambling bills that would legalize online casinos, more bingo nights, and larger poke tournaments. The New Hampshire Lottery Commission is gushing praise because these new online casino games could generate up to $17 million annually, with a portion going into “a new scholarship fund for community college students.”^⁠2

Of course, this amount will only be a drop in the bucket because NH also ranks dead last in aid to higher education. According to the NH Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, we currently spend a paltry $1.50 per capita toward supporting college funding.

While these new gambling bills are hyped as “an opportunity to capitalize on a new form of revenue while providing citizens with new forms of entertainment,” the real bottom line is “no new taxes.”^⁠3 Such a deal: everybody wins except the poor and the needy.

Study after study has shown that lotteries are most detrimental to the poor. As Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise – hardly a liberal – points out: “lottery players finance their tickets largely by cutting spending on necessities. After a state introduces the lotto, the bottom third of households shift about 3% of their food expenditures and 7% of their mortgage payments, rent, and other bills. Effectively, the lottery works like a regressive tax.”^⁠4

Not to be outdone, the latest gambling ploy is playing out right here in Concord, where a “colossal” gambling casino has been tentatively approved to be built near the intersection of Sheep Davis road and Loudon road, wild land where deer and bobcats used to roam when I was growing up.

I’m not a prude: I don’t believe gambling should be banned, but neither should it be promoted by the government at any level: Its mission should be to bring us together and lift us up, not divide and penalize the neediest among us.

Like a good family, a good government should model values that foster responsibility and good behavior. Success is not merely a rational spreadsheet calculated to cut costs to the minimum but, instead, one driven by empathy, aiming to model good habits that benefit us all. As Matthew Loftus wrote in the Atlantic: “Virtue is not simply doing good deeds, but also a set of dispositions and habits that must be practiced in order to flourish.”^⁠5

Positive dispositions are activities like the Black Ice Hockey Tournament and Old Home Day, which unite the community while providing wholesome entertainment. Conversely, a gaming casino initiates folks into a solitary gambling habit which too often morphs into addiction, upending their lives and requiring expensive intervention by the community.

The policies we have in place now to raise money are ridiculous: Brooks, a staunch conservative, provides a good example, citing our national lottery system: the $70 billion spent each year is “strikingly close to what the government spends on food stamps. Is there any set of policies more contradictory than pushing lotto tickets on poor people, and then signing them up for welfare programs that make them financially dependent on the government?”^⁠6

Rather than justifying gambling by transferring some of the loot toward a good cause, why not simply raise taxes on the wealthy, like those who make over 200K? Or institute a sales tax on luxury items – which would have the added benefit of taxing tourists rather than our own most downtrodden.

We should stop funding our government on the cheap with policies that hurt the poor and start taxing the rich their fair share.

xxx

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