I do not have the brain chemistry for gambling. If I bet my house on a coin flip and won, I would be a sleepless wreck for weeks anxiously wondering about what would have happened had I lost. (Like tobacco, this is one of those Latter-day Saint rules I would keep even if I left the Church).
Perhaps because of this, the idea of a gambling addiction, where people destroy their lives because they need the next hit or are trying to get back to even, is very viscerally unpleasant to me (which makes gambling addiction-centered films such as Molly’s Game, The Gambler [preferably the 1974 version, which is based on Dostoevsky’s novel of the same name] and Uncut Gems very intense for me), and I am glad that Utah is one of the most anti-gambling states in the country. I usually bristle at the reflexive Utah=Latter-day Saint connection that many draw, but in this case it makes theoretical sense that Utah’s anti-gambling is in part derived from its Latter-day Saint heritage.
Recently due to a Supreme Court decision the floodgates for sports gambling were opened across the country, and many states liberalized gambling laws. They did this in a staggered fashion, which makes it so that researchers can more rigorously draw causal conclusions about what happens when sports gambling is legalized. A recent paper that just dropped found that when online sports gambling was legalized they “find a roughly 28% increase in bankruptcy likelihood and an 8% increase in debt collection amounts, both statistically significant” among other financial problems. (Standard caveat, I haven’t done a super deep-dive, critical analysis of the methodology, but on a quick read it seems to hold up).
Not to get too political, but while like many white men of a certain age I had a youthful dalliance with the seductive edginess and moral parsimony of libertarianism, as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized life and society is more complicated, and now I’ve become the suffragist in a petticoat marching against demon rum. But even if your libertarian sentiments make you hesitant about banning or regulating sports betting, there is absolutely no reason for the state-run lottery, and I am proud that Utah is one of a very small handful of states that do not have a government run lottery, and that it is probably in large part because of our faith.
Lotteries are clearly a form of regressive tax, to put it gently; to put it less gently, it clearly preys on poor people who are desperate for a break. “The average adult living in the poorest 1% of zip codes spends almost 5% (or $600 annually) of their income on lottery tickets” Again, these are people who can’t afford root canals for their kids and other basics.
When I was a scoutmaster/YM leader and my wife was a YW leader in an impoverished, inner-city ward, we had a jeopardy-type game as an activity where we asked a true/false question about the lottery being a good investment. It was meant as a puffball question, but virtually all of our youth were not aware of the odds involved, and I wonder how common that perception is in low-income areas. I haven’t seen polling on this yet, but I suspect many low-income people see the lottery as some sort of insurance or investment vehicle, which essentially makes a state-run lottery a fraud perpetrated by the state against its most vulnerable, and any way that the Church is involved in pushing back against it–whether through influencing Utah to not have a state lottery, or to dissuade people from playing it–is an objectively good feather in its cap.
Sorry, I know I promised a respite from the Utah-related papers, but the article I cite in here just dropped, so I wanted to address the issue.
But they told us the schools would have plenty of funding if only we approved a lottery. So the schools must have plenty of funding in other states, right? Right?
There was a good article in the Atlantic earlier this year (I believe) that went over how banning gambling altogether wouldn’t be feasible, but access to gambling should not be as accessible than the devices we carry on ourselves all day. Having to go to a specific location (again some place that wouldn’t be in most cities), adds a reasonable hurdle to gambling.
To build on Jader’s comment: “going to a specific place” sounds like a sportsbook. This is one of those Las Vegas things, but sportsbook parking was always the best. Whenever I needed to run in and grab a movie ticket or pick up my to go order there was always an open space right in front. But alas, with the ease of gambling from your phone most casinos have gotten rid of them.
Stephen I will give you a thousand amens.
I recognize that regulating gambling is like regulating sex work or drugs; it’s a complex policy issue with a range of options, and I haven’t don’t enough public policy research on this particular issue to have a strong opinion, but at a meta-level I’m for whatever policy levers need to be pulled to feasibly decrease the total amount of gambling without giving organized crime a monopoly on the industry.
A link to some relevant dialogue from the show “Reaper” in which Ray Wise gave the best performance as the devil that I have seen:
https://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/you-know-i-got-to-say-this-is-one-of-my-greatest-inventions/
A nice bumper-sticker that I saw a few years ago:
THE LOTTERY IS A TAX ON PEOPLE WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND PROBABILITY
On a more serious note, it is fascinating how this topic inevitably induces conservatives to acknowledge that regressive taxation is a bad thing.
Our brains are not wired for a world where we hear about all the rare events that happen to 333 million people. By default we assume that anything we hear about has some reasonable probability of happening to us too. So we overestimate the probability of winning the lottery just like we overestimate the probability of our kids being victims of a school shooting. It’s shameful that our government takes advantage of this flaw in our thinking by sponsoring lotteries. The media doesn’t help by breathlessly covering the winners.
Sports betting and similar forms of gambling take advantage of the same flaws in vulnerable brains as illegal drugs. As far as I’m concerned, people who make money off of others’ gambling are no better than drug dealers.
I prefer a state-run lottery over letting organized crime have the complete market. I am okay with the lottery as an entertainment venue. I can spend $2 for a lottery ticket and daydream a little, or I can spend $12 for a Fast and Furious movie ticket and daydream a little.
I do regret seeing poor people spending $20 on lottery tickets, but I also regret seeing them spend $20 on chewing tobacco. We allow everyone, including the poor, a little bit of dignity when we allow them to make their own choices, even if we judge their choices as poor choices.
That said, I am appalled by the growth of internet-based sports gambling. I would support an absolute ban on that, or at least ban all advertising for that.
“I can spend $2 for a lottery ticket and daydream a little, or I can spend $12 for a Fast and Furious movie ticket and daydream a little.”
That sounds almost exactly like the young man in President Hinckley’s 2005 talk about gambling:
“One of our young men recently said, ‘Pay five bucks to see a movie; pay five bucks to play poker—it is the same idea.'”
His response:
“It is not the same idea. In one case you get something for which you pay; in the other case, only one picks up the winnings and the others are left empty-handed.”
(https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2005/04/gambling?lang=eng)
(No judgment intended against JI).
Republicans and libertarians want lower taxes. Mormon’s want bigger families. So if you want good educational opportunities for our children, one solution is raise money through the lottery. Our pay a fair tax, one that is not regressive.
If Church leadership wants the poor to pay tithing. (One apostle suggested that they pay tithing before feeding family.). There are much worse cases of abusing the poor besides the lottery.
Reeder, You may have misunderstood my comment. I compared $2 to $12 (a 1:6 ratio), but President Hinckley compared $5 to $5:(a 1:1 ratio) — so we’re not talking about the same thing. [That’s an attempt at humor.]. The purpose of my comment, clear from the text, was a personal preference for a state-run lottery rather than leaving it all to organized crime, and to recognize the dignity of allowing agency.
My purpose was not to advocate for gambling, or to moralize about how gambling is a sin, so your comment is wholly non-sequitur to mine.
But that said, and approaching the question as a matter of public policy rather than religious righteousness, do you prefer a state-run lottery or leaving it to organized crime? Or is there another public policy solution?
Roger, if you’ve talked yourself into thinking that lotteries are good for the poor, actually, then I think you’ve really lost the plot here.
I’m saying that state run lotteries help pay for education. But I personally feel that citizens should pay the necessary taxes to support education. Not support education by lotteries. Lotteries suck.
I’m also saying that if you are really concerned about the poor, something needs to be done about the regressive nature of tithing. For members, that is a much bigger problem than lotteries. And increasingly new members are in developing countries.