Governments Royally Flush Taxpayers Money Down The Toilet

According to the New York Times, more than 10% of all state revenues in Rhode Island, South Dakota, Louisiana, Oregon and, of course, Nevada, come from taxes on "gaming" (the preferred euphemism for "gambling"). Rhode Island enjoys more revenue from gambling than it does from corporate taxes. Here in a nearly bankrupt California, I can assure you that casinos are no less popular, and the revenue generated for the state is certainly not trivial.

With all this media talk of states encouraging people to gamble, and therefore playing a part in the development of gambling "addictions", the most important issue of all seems to be completely lost on the mainstream media. The most important thing is that the very same politicians who have mismanaged their budgets, and who have engaged in criminal fraud by running up state and national debts that they have no intention of repaying, are both encouraging consumers to go into gambling debt to finance their own incompetence, and simultaneously punishing those same gamblers with debtors imprisonment. Indeed, the very individuals in Washington who are responsible for our shameful national debt--and for passing the consequences of that debt on to future generations--are currently passing a bankruptcy "reform" law that was written by financial institutions to effectively annihilate bankruptcy protection from creditor harassment (for individuals, not for corporations).

Through all my years of research on debtors imprisonment and activism on behalf of debtors rights, the one thing that astounds me the most is the way our incompetent and corrupt politicians and corporate leaders have themselves been the most fiscally irresponsible citizens in the United States, yet they are able to use their wealth and power to shift the consequences of their own irresponsibility onto all the honest, hard-working, law-abiding American citizens who had absolutely nothing to with so much government and corporate malfeasance.

Something is dreadfully wrong when the citizens of the Land Of Opportunity are reduced to throwing dice and buying state lottery tickets in desperate hopes of attaining financial freedom because they know from experience that hard work alone no longer guarantees prosperity--or even a place to live.

The question shouldn't be whether gambling is good or bad, right or wrong. The question is just how irresponsible and incompetent do elected officials have to be as financial planners, for "gaming" taxes to become one of their primary sources of revenue?

All the best,
Paul