Taking the Easy Way Out
Proponents of legalized state lotteries and casinos as a means of raising government revenue are so preoccupied with the forest that the ghostly shape of the trees escapes them. In the main they are pragmatists, but as such they seem intent upon sacrificing the enduring upon the altar of the immediate.
To the pragmatists, revenue from gambling is an unobjectionable, uncomplicated, tested, workable and effortless way to fill the gaps in government budgets. "People are going to gamble anyway, whether it is legal or not," they reason. They remind us that participation in the games is voluntary. To them legalized and taxed gambling offers a safe political haven in the tempest constantly buffeting those who struggle to bring government budgets into balance.
Next: a Government Sponsored National Lottery
Are you aware that strong movement already is underway to lead America's voracious federal government
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into the weed-choked pastures of lottery revenue? With that goal established, who knows what the next target will be in the movement toward the legitimizing of vices?
To the unthinking citizen whose attention is riveted only on holding the line on taxes while increasing government handouts, powerful forces in this country make what seems a convincing case for taking the wraps off all forms of gambling — and some would include other vices as well — and de-criminalizing them in order to channel proceeds to the public benefit instead of to illegal operators. If you tend to shrug off that decriminalization as unlikely, consider the fact that in nearly half of our 50 states, citizens have been offered, through the democratic process, the opportunity to test their luck in government-sponsored lotteries. They have seized upon that new permissiveness with great relish. People from all walks of life — and, yes, from a variety of church relationships — dutifully and enthusiastically participate by religiously purchasing their lottery tickets — aware though some may be of the horrendous odds against them.
Lotteries: "Something for Everyone"
The pragmatists can present convincing evidence to confirm the success of lotteries. The total take from state-sponsored games rose from $5.3 billion in 1983 to $6.7 billion in 1984 and $8 billion in 1985. Few, if any, find cause for complaint when dazzled by these figures. State treasuries are gleaning a combined total of nearly $2.5 billion each year from lotteries. Almost as much as that is handed out each year to prizewinners, and certainly
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none of these instant millionaires would find fault with the system.1
Pennsylvania has created more than 100 millionaires since the inauguration of its lottery, and other hopeful participants easily picture themselves the next to enter those worry-free ranks. Odds calculators splash a little cold water on that dream however. Some reckon that a person is 3.5 times more likely to be killed by lightning and five times more likely to be eaten by a shark than he is to win a state lottery jackpot!
All state lotteries offer fat commissions for ticket sellers, and that fact enlists the support of supermarket and convenience store operators and other vendors who welcome a new source of revenue. Their percentage usually is 5 percent of their gross sales. Other administrative costs soak up more than $600 million from the total intake each year.
One persistent argument in favor of state lotteries is that they do offer legislators an apparent solution for their perplexing fiscal dilemma. Lotto is a handy way to raise revenue without raising taxes, and Americans are growing more and more resistant to new taxes. Harry A. Johnston II, 1985-86 President of the Florida Senate, predicted that "lotteries will be with us during the next three years." His reasoning is typically pragmatic and disturbingly lacking in statesmanship: "Rather than increase taxes we will take the easy way out (italics mine) and go to the lottery," he writes.2
A Fickle Source of Income
But lotteries prove a fickle source of income for states that elect to go that route. When California began
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its lottery in October 1985, it grossed $8.4 million during the first week. By the second week of January 1986, the gross had fallen to less than half that much. Sales in California bottomed out at slightly more than $3 million two months later, prompting Lottery Director Mark Michalko to innovate in May a "Second Chance" gimmick that selects 50 $2,500 winners out of all the losing tickets. The strategy pulled the California lottery out of its summer doldrums.3
In 1981, the Arizona lottery's opening week generated an unanticipated $5.4 million. Enthusiasm ran high among legislators and administrators, and proponents of state lotteries everywhere rubbed their hands with glee. A year later, however, the gross had dropped 83 percent to only $900,000 a week. Lottery officials then recognized the importance of innovation and excitement, and of vigorous marketing of their product.
"In lottery operations," says Douglas Gordon, executive director of the District of Columbia's lottery, "you have to keep innovating to be successful."4 That means you must market your product. State lotteries flounder when they do nothing more than passively serve the needs of citizens in search of opportunities to gamble. Lottery managers must create that desire.
A passive service is not enough to meet their financial goals. They must fan the flame. They must make converts from the ranks of nongamblers, and — like yet undiscovered alcoholics — one in 20 of these will be gripped by a new and unsuspected compulsion once that first wager is made.
Lottery states must motivate experienced gamblers to gamble more. They must make Lotto exciting — the "in thing." And while doing all that they must compete
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with other gambling enterprises — legal and illegal alike — most of which offer significantly better odds.
Proponents Say It Is "Voluntary"
"It's strictly voluntary," the proponents of state-sponsored gambling insist — meaning, presumably, that no one influences anyone else to flush his money down the state lottery drain. In the proponents' rationale, that "voluntary" aspect appears to remove all ethical restraints.
Consider the alcoholic, however, if you are open to a new perspective on the word. His drinking surely is voluntary, quite aggressively so. No one feeds him alcohol intravenously, or forces down his throat the booze that destroys him. He drinks it by his own volition. The drug addict, too, snorts, swallows, inhales or injects his fix of his own free will. The victim of obesity opens the refrigerator door voluntarily to stuff another snack in his mouth or down another beer.
Most of us have found that the human will under pressure is a weak and unreliable ally. Our will seldom functions ethically as a truly free agent. Most of us have discovered, often to our embarrassment or shame, that our will is subject to a wide variety of powerful human compulsions, and these are not always attuned to the perfect will of God.
"It was completely voluntary when I bet my family's grocery money on an ill-fated filly at Aqueduct," an admitted compulsive gambler in New Jersey retorted when asked to comment on state funding through the "voluntary" taxes derived from lotteries. The distorted sense of values that enslaved his will drove him to physical,
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financial, emotional and marital ruin before he was able to acknowledge his sickness. He is among the few who seek help to bring them back from the brink of personal disaster.
Christians should find themselves concerned about the potential dangers of a source of government revenue dependent upon human greed and weakness of will. Informed believers should have second thoughts about their government's role in fanning the flame of that against-all-odds hope of instant wealth that impoverishes more often than it enriches. The purchase of lottery tickets is far from voluntary when sponsoring states budget millions each year for media blitzes to lure new players into the act.
For followers of Jesus Christ, gambling is an insidious form of worldliness. If our citizenship truly is in heaven (see Philippians 3:20) and our supply comes from God (see 4:19), then we cannot harmonize that faith with the testing of fate called "gambling." The kind of greed — and fantasy — that goes hand-in-hand with wagering can motivate people to squander on lottery tickets and other forms of gambling assets better spent on the necessities of life for themselves and for their families, on helping the unfortunate or on the evangelizing of a lost world. When the state hustles them to hand over that money in the futile hope of instant riches, they are not taxpayers; they are victims. In the vocabulary of the gamblers, they are "pigeons." They are not blessed; they are duped. They are not served, they are exploited.
A Regressive Form of Taxation
Moreover, state lotteries as funding devices — unlike
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traditional tax formulas — tend to produce income for the state in reverse proportion to the earning levels, and thus the tax liability, of its citizens. As an alternative to tax revenue, lotteries are regressive and, therefore, unfair.
Figures released by the Illinois Legislative Council support that conclusion. Residents of prosperous suburban DuPage County, west of Chicago, out-earn other Illinois citizens with their $14,000 per-capita income, but they provide per-capita lottery revenue of only $15 — next to the lowest in the state. In contrast, Cook County, composed primarily of Chicago with its $7,000 income per person, accounts for a surprising $46.26 in per-capita lottery revenue.
"Lottery revenue" in Illinois refers to the state's take of only 41 percent of the money actually wagered. The amount of money wagered is more than twice what the revenue is. That means the average DuPage County resident — wealthier than his counterpart in other areas of the state — purchases $36 worth of lottery tickets each year, while the average Cook County resident, with considerably less "discretionary" income — and perhaps equally inadequate discretion? — wagers about $112, more than three times as much as his wealthier west-suburban neighbors.
Let us reduce that to an even more basic concept. Earnings from the Illinois lottery are that state's alternative — in part — to revenue from taxes. Resorting to that alternative prompts people who earn half as much money as their more affluent neighbors to pump three times as much money into the state's coffers. That is what we mean by "regressive" taxation.
Poor people outnumber rich people wherever we go, and the lotteries show us that less affluent citizens are
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the ones more likely to take a chance on making that big win of a lifetime. They are more willing to risk what little they have against the possibility of lasting freedom from the disheartening economic uncertainties that threaten to plague them at the end.
"As bad as things are," they reason, "it won't be much worse if I risk a few bucks each week on winning the jackpot. But I'll be a heck of a lot better off if I'm the lucky one, and the more I bet the better my chances of winning." Those "chances of winning," in a sense, become the object of their faith. Sadly, in the case of 99.99999 percent of these misled citizens, that line of reasoning and that object of faith result in a steady, debilitating drain on their already inadequate finances. That, too, is what we mean by "regressive."
A Step Toward Legalized Casinos
But compulsive behavior and regressive taxation are not our only objections to state-sponsored lotteries. Such lotteries are deliberately designed, in addition to their other purposes, to strengthen the case for legalized casinos in the several areas where initiatives are pending. When Hollywood, Florida public relations professional Jay Kashuk was gathering signatures on petitions urging a state lottery in Florida, he told the Miami Herald on March 19, 1982, that the lottery scheme was designed as "a public relations tool to ease the feelings toward the word, 'casino,' " With that statement he gave substance to what other proponents had dismissed as merely a "paranoid fear."
Kashuk is one of the organizers of the persistent Committee for Florida State Lotteries, and is identified
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with Castaways Hotel owner Charles Rosen, Fontainbleu Hotel owner Stephen Muss and Marco Polo Hotel owner Bennett Lifter in an untiring initiative to legalize casinos on Miami Beach. Kashuk's statement confirms the fact that a state lottery would be perceived by some as the first step toward overcoming the stubborn resistance disenchanted Floridians mount against casino gambling.
The Ethical Conflict
These facts make Christians part of a complicated ethical conflict. Some state lawmakers themselves confess to experiencing a dilemma as they ponder the relative merits of easing the tax burden through revenue from gambling.
"In New Jersey," writes Assistant Minority Leader Chuck Hardwick, assemblyman from his state's twenty-first district, "the public debated ethics when they considered the lottery and later the casinos. By their affirmative vote, in our democratic society, they have decided the ethical questions on whether there should be gambling, so now, the new ethical issues center around how gambling is to be conducted, and the state's responsibility to those who are hurt by it."5
Here are the political and ethical questions with which the New Jersey Legislature now struggles:
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Hardwick believes states contemplating taking the plunge into gambling should delve deeply into all the facts before making a decision. "I would urge any state considering expansion of any form of gambling to study New Jersey and other high gambling states to profit from our mistakes," he says. He has specific suggestions for those intent upon following his state's example:
There should be a dedication of revenues from the very beginning to confront identifiable social problems, such as compulsive gambling, which may not be evident until gambling has been in place in a state for a while.
I doubt that the proponents of the gambling industry are greedier than other businesses. [There are those who take a less charitable view!], but their privileged position places them in a strong advantage over many vulnerable members of the public. Consequently, the laws concerning the industry's activities should be stringent so the public isn't relying upon the industry's discretion or good will.6
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These are haunting ethical considerations. They require carefully authenticated answers before even our secular society launches prematurely its determined gambling revenue programs.
When a Nation's Character Is at Stake
In the early 1800s, poet William Blake included this terse observation in a characteristically blunt social statement he hoped would provide guidance for his fellow Englishmen. Nearly two centuries later, Blake's little rhyme (circa 1815) still has a certain subtle relevancy:
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.7
When the character or the future of a nation is at stake, it behooves its citizens to weigh carefully the broader issues involved, however strong their personal passions may be, and to consider all the consequences before making a decision of such magnitude. Factors other than raw dollar figures must be dealt with. The disturbing questions demanding answers begin with this: Are a few more dollars in the state treasury a satisfactory trade-off for the aggressive encouragement of a notorious human weakness, the undermining of the work ethic, the compromise of our faith and the lowering of personal values that such a reckless strategy will encourage? Is the revenue anticipated from legalized gambling really worth the fantasy it stimulates and the human misery and instability it generates? Is there not a
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logical basis for the fear that the "big bucks" available to gambling entrepreneurs offer an open invitation to even more fraud and corruption in our already troubled land?
It is true that public sentiment in the past has swung to the permissive at historical watersheds, only to return in due time to a more cautious and conservative view. Usually it was men of Christian commitment who influenced that occasional cooling of human passions. Left to its own resources, that pendulum likely will continue its tireless arc, arriving every century or so at opposite extremes on the scale of moral and ethical perception. Yet at this particular moment in history, gambling, particularly as a means of government funding, is the new obsession of what is assumed to be a rational and responsible citizenry.
Perhaps we can do no more than speculate — dare we say, "gamble on it"? — as to the consequences of that obsession until we have run once again the full cycle that saw gambling prohibited in this country — for whatever reasons — a century or more ago.
Reducing the Cost of Government
The compelling notion itself, however, that more money must be channeled into government coffers by whatever method it takes to achieve it raises a separate issue of enormous significance. Yes, we are to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" (see Mark 12:17), but is there not a limit on what Caesar can justly and reasonably demand of his citizens? That is a question deserving careful and courageous reflection as the gambling issue is pondered. Is the escape from our cost-of-government dilemma a simple matter of finding always more revenue,
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no matter how much our standards or our spiritual well-being are compromised in the process? Or is it more realistic and more productive to bury the gambling issue once and for all — without mourning — and address with determination the question of how to reduce government spending?
A frightening proportion of that spending most certainly has its roots in poor judgment, boondoggling, ineptness, unconscionable waste, special interest lobbying and out-and-out corruption. Must Christians — to whom all government is of God — cynically accept these abuses as inevitable and be made accessories by this specious reasoning? Is the only available solution the desperate funneling of more money into government, even if we must victimize our fellow citizens by siphoning it from the wallets of gambling pigeons?
I think not!
Points to Ponder
1. Pragmatically, lotteries do produce large sums of money for their sponsoring states — large sums, that is, until you compare the take with the total state budget. Lottery revenue averages only 2 or 3 percent of the revenue from tax and fee sources. If gambling really isn't in the best interest of the American people, does that relatively small amount of state income justify ignoring our responsibility and "gambling" on the possible harm lotteries might inflict upon our people?
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2. Do you feel "taking the easy way out" is an acceptable expressing of the responsibility that must be shouldered by those who make, interpret or enforce our laws?
3. What is the possible flaw in the reasoning that betting on the numbers to be drawn in the state lottery is voluntary and, therefore, poses no risk or potential danger to the public?
4. Why do you think people who can least afford to lose apparently are most likely to place bets in state lotteries? Can the state's efforts to persuade people to buy Lotto tickets be construed as a breach of faith by misleading them into an unrealistic expectation of winning?
5. To what degree do you feel the financial squeeze of government — reflected in budget deficits — can be laid at the feet of excessive government spending rather than on the government's inability to raise enough money?
Notes
1. State Legislatures, March 1986.
2. Harry A. Johnstone, II, letter to the author, January 17, 1985. Used by permission.
3. Miami Herald, May 15, 1986.
4. Public Gaming, March 1985, p. 32
5. Chuck Hardwick, letter to the author, Mary 31, 1984. Used by permission.
6. Ibid.
7. William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence," The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 74.
Chapter Three || Table of Contents