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22.05.12

My home state of Maryland recently built its first casinos, which by law offer slot machines only. That means no table games and no poker.

As much as I dislike using -EV luck-based games as a source of state revenue, this seems like an especially asinine policy. It encourages the worst kind of gambling while creating fewer jobs and hamstringing Maryland’s casinos in their competition with those in neighboring Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

There are a few reasons why gambling-as-revenue-stream is bad public policy. First, decades of experience with the lottery suggest that it’s a regressive tax. That is, it draws a disproportionate amount of its revenue from the lowest-income households in the state. This is both bad for those families and for the economy in general, as additional money in their pockets is more likely to be spent in ways that stimulate the economy as a whole.

Don’t insult me with those ridiculous claims like “the money is for education!” Money is fungible, and education is already a high-priority budget item. Money raised from slot machines and earmarked for education is simply money that would otherwise have been diverted from some other budget item. The disingenuousness of this claim is jaw-dropping, and it’s even more appalling to me how many people fall for and parrot it. It’s like they understand nothing about how money works. Which brings me to my next point…

Source: CardPlayer.com (blog)

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