Matthew Yglesias » Love The Gambling, Hate The Gambling-Related Employment

Nov 15th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

Love The Gambling, Hate The Gambling-Related Employment

I can see the case for banning gambling. And I can see the case for permitting gambling. But what on earth is the case for Maryland-style allowing electronic games but not table games? Table games provide more in the way of real employment for people.

Comments
37

Filed under: Gambling, Maryland, Regulation

37 Responses to “Love The Gambling, Hate The Gambling-Related Employment”

kth Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Presumably slot machines are easier to regulate and monitor than blackjack dealers?
BG Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
These aren’t casinos, they’re senior citizen recreation centers.
cheflovesbeer Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
As a longtime observer of MD politics, I have no idea. It never made any sense to me. I think where it started was at the beginning of the debate here. The debate was started by casino owners who do not want to have to pay employees. One of the first arguments was we half to accept what the casinos want because they will give us the best deal now. Also, the machines were going to be at the race tracks where gambling was already happening. But political pressure kept it out of Pimlico Race Track. The place that needed the money the most. PA initially did not have table gambling but recently added it. MD may come to its senses. But I would not hold my breath.
James Gary Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Table games actually involve some degree of control and decision-making on the part of the gambler. And we can’t have that, now can we?
Tom B. Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
State-sponsored gambling comes in phases, something like this, in more or less this order: 1. A lottery 1a. scratch cards 1b. computerized lottery games like Powerball 1c. some form of Keno. 2. Casino boats, docked on rivers or lakes. 2a. Casino boat must cruise, i.e., must leave the dock for period of time, usually 1 or 2 hours. 2b. Casino boat no longer cruises — patrons may come and go any time. 3. Games on land. 3a. video terminal games: poker, video slots, etc. 3b. Full-blown casinos with table games (including poker).

Why? State legislatures are infected with a form of Puritanism, which is weakened in stages as the state gets more deeply hooked on the need for gambling revenue.
Jason L. Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Were Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins involved in the drafting of this legislation? This sounds like the sort of law where there are some “moderates” who feel the need to randomly water down a bill for no apparent reason.
Don Williams Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Matthew seems to think that there is some difference between state politicans vs Mafia Dons trying to squeeze every cent out of their victims that they can.
UserGoogol Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Don Williams: Even if you want to take the road of reflexive paranoia, that doesn’t actually explain anything. If they wanted to squeeze every cent out of their victims, they’d squeeze EVERY cent. And if they think that this is the most they can get away with, then the question is the same: what on earth is the case for allowing only electronic gambling?
TRIATHLON Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
STATES RIGHTS!!!

MATT SAYS: I can see the case for banning gambling. And I can see the case for permitting gambling. But what on earth is the case for Maryland-style allowing electronic games but not table games? Table games provide more in the way of real employment for people.

TRIATHLON REPLYS: It comes under the pre-Lincoln Era, which is once again taking vogue, that of States, and Local Authority to decide its own regional issues, States Rights. Gambling has always been and always will be, now with diest its a sin, what ever that is, and with non diest its just what it is, if your lucky or skillful join the game if not or a moralist diest go away.

My gut feeling is you will find a group of diest moralist lighting a fire under the local political group in powers feet, and the boys had to do something so they did like a wise Jewish King but did cut the baby in half. Well folks we can’t stop electronic gambling on the internet,all we can do is stop it in the state, [like that's going to happen], back to hotel rooms, garages, and back alleys. But, it cut the mustard and kept the voting block happy.

You have to love States Rights, and Political Hacks, no morals are the bottom and it works clear thru too the very top of the government Liars, Crooks, Democratics and Republicans, It makes one think of Casablanca, I’m Shocked that Gambling would have been going on in Ricks Establishment the chief pragmatic inspector stuffing money in his pockets pockets, as our pragmatic Democratics and Republican stuff votes into the ballet box.

HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
HARD-CORE INDERPENDENT TEA-BAGGER
southpaw Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Damn Yankees intahfering I say intahfering with mah propertah rights. Gawd save the confederacy and our peculiah instahtution. [/secessionist]

So . . . table games? I like roulette.
Matthew G. Saroff Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
There are two goals.

The first is central to conservative politics: To make the paying of taxes a penalty for bad behavior (gambling) rather than dues one pays in a society. It’s the same as Seattle’s proposed “latte tax”. Only bad, profilgate, or stupid people should pay taxes.

The second, and cross party, goal is to subsidize the horse racing industry.
N Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
My guess is that you can lose a lot more money at table games. So, for instance, you can bleed yourself out slowly on slots or bet all of you Social Security check, your kid’s college fund, you mortgage money etc at a table game and go broke instantly. It actually makes sense since people are less likely to commit suicide/live in cardboard boxes outside the casino where there’s slots only versus where there’s table games.

Gambling is a sick, disgusting industry and casino operators are worse than heroin dealers. At least heroin dealers give you something for your money.
tomemos Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
“My guess is that you can lose a lot more money at table games. So, for instance, you can bleed yourself out slowly on slots or bet all of you Social Security check, your kid’s college fund, you mortgage money etc at a table game and go broke instantly.”

Actually, maximum bets are universal. The casino doesn’t want to lose all its money at once any more than the customers do (less, probably). Do you think there are more people addicted to table games or to slot machines? Why do you think nearly all casinos have replaced as many of their tables as possible with slots, even where tables are legal?

“Gambling is a sick, disgusting industry and casino operators are worse than heroin dealers. At least heroin dealers give you something for your money.”

Of course you get something: the exciting experience of gambling. By your logic, you could say that cinema and theater operators, video game arcades, and strip clubs are all worse than heroin, since none of them “give you something.”

Granted gambling is way more addictive than any of the above, so it has to be heavily regulated. But it’s not like people don’t have fun gambling; of course they do.
Brahma Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
tomemos wrote:

By your logic, you could say that cinema and theater operators, video game arcades, and strip clubs are all worse than heroin, since none of them “give you something.” Granted gambling is way more addictive than any of the above, so it has to be heavily regulated. But it’s not like people don’t have fun gambling; of course they do.

Granted, I am biased because my mother was a completely out-of-control compulsive gambler when I was a child-to-teenager (hell, I knew my way around Reno’s equivalent of The Strip better than my own hometown then), but still.

Lots of people have fun doing lots of things, but as a society we chose to curtail your “fun” when it ( ie., what gamblers and strip club enthusiasts call “fun”) has lots of negative externalities. Addicts of all kinds should find a less harmful way to have “fun” and we certainly as a matter of public policy shouldn’t condone their twisted, sick ideas about pleasure by making the delivery of public services contingent upon revenues from it’s proliferation.
N Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Tomemos,

Comparing gambling to watching movies is like comparing rape to making love to your wife. I’m sorry, maybe you love the thrill of throwing money away at a casino but gambling addiction is real. Casinos aren’t selling a product. They aren’t selling an experience. They’re taking money from the dim-witted, the suckers and above all, gambling addicts. Movie theaters don’t leave wrecked families, suicides and people living in cardboard, hoping to scrounge enough money together to back to the slots.

You should check out North Las Vegas some time. It’s the less charming, less quaint side of the ‘gaming’ industry.
djw Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Comparing gambling to watching movies is like comparing rape to making love to your wife

yes, because the key difference between gambling and watching movies involves the question of consent?

gambling/movie analogy is, at worst, inapt in some crucial respects (although not the one under question). Your analogy is rather obviously much, much worse.
TRIATHLON Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
CHOICE NOT FORCE

Gambling is for the most part a choice, except in movies were American Prisoners are forced to play Russian roulette [The Deer Hunter], no one forces anyone to gamble, and it is a life choice, its not going away. Its like the State Government that made the choice to control it for political gain or were forced to by a political group.

So, what is your choice the State controlling every action of the citizens or is the State to set boundaries within which the social order can be maintained yet providing for individual liberty.

Life is messy, your born, life is a bitch, and then you die. What is the function of the State in relation to the Citizen?

As an Independent Tea-Bagger, the less State the better, civil excess within controlled STATE limitation.

HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN
Jason L. Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Gambling is a problem for progressives, in a way that it is not a problem for social conservatives or for big-business conservatives.

Social conservatives see gambling as a vice, and thus it should be banned, irrespective of issues of freedom or pleasure. Big-business conservatives see gambling like they do tobacco or guns — you can make money off of it, so the social problems of it don’t matter.

Progressives on the other hand at once value individual freedom and the ability to pursue pleasure as well as the well-being of society. Progressives weigh these things to different extents. Progressives who are fond of market solutions would probably want to figure out how big gambling’s negative externalities are and price it accordingly. But gambling is also addictive, which suggests that simply internalizing externalities will not result in socially optimal behavior.

People know people whose lives are destroyed by gambling. This makes the issue very emotional for some as well. I don’t really know what my position on gambling is, but I think it’s an issue that progressives ought to be especially patient and understanding with when discussing it with other progressives.
Aqua Regia Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
This N guy certainly sounds like he has a lot of issues to work through. Comparing a casino to a rapist? That’s just twisted. Selling a product is exactly what they do. Like cigarettes and alcohol, gambling is a drug that should be legal but regulated.

At least tomemos is speaking reasonably, and actually made one point that I think is very important: people get addicted to gambling, and governments also get addicted to gambling, or at least the revenue streams that gambling provides. This leads governments to favour development of even more gambling-related revenue streams, and that could end up being bad for citizens.

On a side-note: I love playing poker, but I will never understand people that participate in other kinds of gambling: slots, sports betting, lottery tickets, roulette. You have no control over any of the outcomes in those games. I understand that they provide an intermittent payout that is designed to stimulate the brain’s pleasure centres but I don’t think it works for me. However, a lot of people do enjoy those more passive forms of gambling, and can partake in them without becoming addicted, so I’m not going to tell them that their chosen drug should be illegal but mine should be legal.

Except VLTs in bars. Those are heinous, and probably should be illegal.
Brahma Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Jason L. wrote:

Big-business conservatives see gambling like they do tobacco or guns — you can make money off of it, so the social problems of it don’t matter.

Don’t forget Libertarians. Libertarians want legalized gambling and even hard drugs, under the guise of increasing “personal freedom” and reducing government intervention.

In reality, though, they just want more prostate people to be nudged into a “market”, which is by their definition the highest possible good, so they can exploit those people and make a lot of money.
Omega Centauri Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
If I had my druthers, we would ban gambling. But, I know that would work about as well as prohibition did*. Same with our foolish war on drugs. The effects of trying to shut down popular forms of vice usually do more harm than the activity. So regulation and taxing -plus education and help centers for the addicted seem to be about as well as we can do.

* The exception would be if the dominate religious views of the region were sufficently against, then we should probably go along and vanish. Outside of -perhaps Utah I don’t think those conditions apply in this country.
Shmoe Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
God help me, but, TRIATHLON(@9) seems to be right! I’m going to go put a gun in my mouth.

P.S. That tag is simultaneously creepy and silly, TRIATHLON.
horseball Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
States legalize gambling to provide revenue, not to create jobs. Slot machines and the like (VLTs, video poker) are the most efficient way to make money. They’re always on, you don’t have to wait, there’s no dealer/croupier, people expect to lose money and do so without complaint, etc.

Omega Centauri —

There was a lot less gambling in the 1970s before they opened Atlantic City and before the Indian Casinos and riverboats started. While there surely were more illegal card games etc. back then I didn’t notice any profound breakdowns in the social order or Al Capone shootouts or anything.
Justin Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Pennsylvania has the same system: the casino near my house has slots, but no table games. I’ve always thought that even for someone who’s anti-gambling, sitting down at a table with one’s fellow human beings would be better than sitting in front of a screen, but I’d never noticed the employment angle.
Kyle Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Uh, table games are kind of cool and fun, while slot machines are pathetic and soul sucking? Duh.
Anthony Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Hey HERCULE TRIATHLON SAVINIEN:

Why don’t you secede from this blog, the internet, political commentary.
Aqua Regia Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Pennsylvania has the same system: the casino near my house has slots, but no table games.

Is that due to the gaming laws in Pennsylvania, or because of a financial decision that this casino has made?
LaFollette Progressive Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
I’ve lived in Maryland for six years, and I have never met a single person here who has the slightest idea why the state handles gambling in such a half-assed fashion. Our liquor laws are equally idiotic. Any hope of change? No.

No matter the issue here, it can be reliably assumed that both parties support the wrong position.
Crissa Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Electronic games have a bigger lobby – bar owners – but yes, that is a very fair point. They’re easier for the proprietor to cheat at and don’t add to employment.

I got bored playing video poker. Sure I’d do better than against a real person when they were doing single-deck, but… It’s just something you do while waiting for your crew to show up before bar hopping or dancing. Just like reading a book or drinking tea. And I can carry an electronic game in my pocket which is far more interesting.

So I haven’t played video poker for money in over ten years.
Omega Centauri Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Horseball @23. Well, yes, promoting a vice isn’t good policy either. The attitude should be more like, this isn’t good for you, but if you really really can’t resist we have a relatively safe way to do it. But in the places I live the state actively advertises lotteries, and most everyone things casinos will give them something for nothing. The voters think free state revenue. Local boosters think, more tourist revenue. The customers think, one more roll and it will be my lucky day. And Donald Trump thinks he will make $1B building the next resort. But in reality it promotes the something for nothing mentality.
pseudonymous in nc Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 1:42 am
The workaround in the NC Cherokee casino is to have table games with screens. Yep, you sit at the blackjack table and your cards appear on a monitor.

If you’re going to support horse-racing, I don’t see why you don’t legalize off-track betting on horse races in state-licensed betting shops. The taboo against sports betting seems bizarre to lots of non-Americans, though that’s mainly because it’s considered normal in lots of countries, and while the gee-gees have been the ruin of many, I don’t think they’re any less ruinous than video poker.
Richard Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 6:06 am
The freedom to gamble is all about consumer rights. Surely if someone possesses money, they are entitled to gamble with it. The problem with government intervention is when it gives the illusion of choice, by not outlawing gambling, but massively restricting it. In Europe, citizens of Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Greece have no choice of who they can bet with, which is very unfair as they get poor value through monopoly bookmakers. The campaign at http://www.right2bet.net believes these folk deserve free competition between suppliers. If you sympathise please support the petition.
Mean Gene Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 9:07 am
I don’t think I saw the answer to the question in the comments, but the reason casinos prefer electronic games to table games is that they maximize profit per square foot. A slot machine takes up very little floor space, you plug it in and that’s that. You don’t have to train it, pay it, or supervise it. People put their money in, press the buttons, and lose according to pre-programmed percentages. I believe I’ve read also that people who play slots tend to play longer than people who play table games, and casinos want people to play as long as possible to let dread Probability do its thing.
ajw93 Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
@pseudonymous 31: Hilariously, last year on Derby Day my mom called me as the NY OTB system had gone down and she wanted me to place a bet for her. Once I picked myself up off the floor from laughing, I had to explain that I live in Virginia, where pretty much anything that’s fun is illegal.

Like Sangria was until 2008.
Adam Villani Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Gambling is a lot more akin to alcohol; there are a lot of people who become addicted and whose lives get ruined by it, but there are also plenty of people who can enjoy it moderately, or on occasion. There are ups and downs, but for most, no ruin.

One place I was surprised to see so many casinos at was Montana. Before visiting the state, I had no idea gambling was legal there and that there were casinos everywhere. They’re all pretty small, though, like the size of a Denny’s, not like the places in Nevada.
JRE Says:
November 16th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Video gambling parlors (which are being proposed in my state) are basically a way of allowing a city to have all the social misery that comes with legalized gambling, but with none tourism revenue that comes with real casinos. It’s a win-win if you’re trying to finish the job on a blighted urban core!
Max424 Says:
November 17th, 2009 at 1:52 am
MY “I can see the case for banning gambling. And I can see the case for permitting gambling.”

Me too. It is a complex question.

Gambling comes in many forms, doesn’t it? There are professional gamblers, to whom gambling is not gambling at all, but simply a business, like any other business. And then there is the vast majority of gamblers, the other 99%, that gamble for excitement, play bingo, pull slots, buy scratch tickets, call their bookies on Sunday morning, and maybe hit the Casino, once or twice a week.

Unfortunately, and all too often, a large percentage of these types morph into addicts, in it only for the juice, for the thrill of playing beyond their means, the electric pull of playing for life altering stakes. How many times have I, just one single person, seen people ruined, or nearly ruined, in such fashion? Thousands upon thousands.

When we allowed the Indian Casinos to spring up around the country, we crossed the Rubicon. So be it. Legalized gambling and Casinos are here to stay. But I will say this, having been in the business for 35 years, if gambling is not heavily regulated, it will destroy this country. Consider this a mortal lock.

In my opinion, anyone who wishes to gamble should have to pass a course on odds and percentages, sign a document after completion of this course whereby they state that they are fully aware that it is mathematically impossible to win in Casinos or against machines, and then, if they wish to continue, they must purchase a gambling license that only allows them to wager only a certain percentage of their monthly income in State run Casinos, gambling facilities, or against State operated machines.

Even this might not be enough. But, at the very least, if the State is intent on stripping its citizens of their assets, then it should inform its citizens, openly, that it is doing so, and it would also behoove the State to do it slow, otherwise, before long, there won’t be any assets left for the State to strip.