In his haste to justify state-operated gambling, Patrick tells us in today’s Globe
that “for a long time now, gaming has been in practice in Massachusetts, and gaming revenues have been used to support public projects.” As examples, he cites Faneuil Hall and Harvard University buildings. These were not public projects, but private ones. He also cites the American Revolution as a lottery-funded project; I’m not sure if and how a lottery was used, but– there were no government taxes then, by definition. And holding a lottery to fund a revolutionary army is hardly the same moral dilemma as becoming a profit-partner in a permanent behemoth gambling/entertainment empire that fleeces the poor to spare mega-corporations the inconvenience of paying fair taxes.
In another Globe story today, the conservative Beacon Hill Institute argues that job-creation numbers are not the best indicator of economic health, and that income is a better qualitative measure. “For example, Nevada leads the nation in job growth, but much of it comes from lower-paying service jobs in casinos, hotels and restaurants. I wouldn’t want to build an economy around that.”
Anyway, tens of thousands of jobs in the state are actually going unfilled. And, aside from inadequate education, the state’s constrained housing supply, as Ed Glaeser states in the same Globe article, is the key barrier to incoming workers. So “creating jobs” isn’t the problem. Creating workers is.
Promulgate a balanced budget by cutting corporate taxes, and make it up by instituting a regressive tax in the form of gambling.
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p>Sure glad we ended that Republican Reign of Terror.
The messaging here is sort of like “Clean Air and Skies Act” versus “Polluted Air and Greenhouse-Enducing Skies.”
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p>Gaming sounds fun – and it doesn’t sound like gambling, which has a bad connotation. The only problem is, quite unlike football or scrabble, it’s more than just a game when you lose. That’s why people who are honest on the issue call it “gambling.”
You make it sound like the opposition is based entirely on busybody “temperence movement” moral grounds, which is just not a good argument.
I’m not the one who calls it “gaming.”
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p>They do it for a reason. I gave you the reason. Messaging is a huge part of the political process, the casino industry isn’t going to use the word “gambling” because that does leave a sour taste in many mouths, whether you agree with that taste or not.
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p>Furthermore, on a pure profit standpoint, casinos benefit when people think of it as “gaming” instead of “gambling,” because whenever you gamble, you know there’s a larger chance that you’ll lose than win. Gaming sounds like pure fun and has no connotations in that regard.
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p>Again, I’m not trying to argue for or against casinos in this specific reply, I’m just explaining why the casino industry uses the word “gaming” as opposed to “gambling.” You can feel free to disagree, but you’d be wrong.