Thursday, December 12, 2024

Part I

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From $7 Billion in 2018 to $150 Billion in 2025: Gambling in America is Absolutely Booming – How in the World Did We Get to This Point?

The Economist of London thinks it’s pointing to something very significant when it runs a series with the headline, “Gambling is Growing like Gangbusters in America.” There’s a certain irony in that headline, but let’s just face the fact that the big story here is a vast increase in the number of Americans gambling and how much money they are gambling. The array of different activities that are now included and legalized and for that matter, still illegal gambling and the fact that this has now become a major part of American culture. And as The Economist notes a major part of the American economy as well. Our concern here is more with what this reveals about morality, worldview, human nature. They’re all very much a part of this particular picture.

Let’s start with The Economist. The Economist is one of the most important media entities in Great Britain. It is primarily associated with the economy. You can tell that from the title, but it is also interested in the economic dimensions of the larger culture. It is authoritative in the British context and it is widely read on both sides of the Atlantic. It is something like a British version of the Wall Street Journal, very similar kind of approach. But when you look at the moral judgment being made by The Economist, it’s here and it is very much a moral judgment. Another headline in their series is this, “America’s Gambling Boom Should be Celebrated, Not Feared.” And so we are talking here about two different possible responses to this radical increase in gambling. One is to think it’s a bad thing, one is to think it’s a good thing.

The Economist declares itself saying that it is a good thing, it should be celebrated, not feared. Now, the very fact that you publish a series like this and you run a headline like that indicates that The Economist knows this is a moral issue. It doesn’t want to face the moral issue squarely, but it does at least acknowledge them. Let’s look first of all at the major news analysis offered by The Economist on just the facts of how much gambling is growing in the United States. Well, here’s one interesting thing, back in 2018, that’s not exactly ancient history, less than 10 years ago, Americans bet $7 billion on sports, it’s now $150 billion a year. So from $7 billion a year to $150 billion a year, you don’t have to be very good at math to know that is an exponential, massive increase. And yes, it tells us something, as The Economist tells us, the craze for betting is in their words, “Sweeping over America”.

“This year, Americans are on track to wager nearly $150 billion on sports having bet a paltry $7 billion in 2018. Another $80 billion is being in online casinos. In the few weeks when election gambling was legal before the presidential vote, hundreds of millions of dollars were placed on the outcome.” “Even physical casinos are spreading. Soon the island of Manhattan could have its own casino towering over Times Square.” Now, later in this very article, we are told that at least one major figure that’s the owner of the New York Mets, Steve Cohen, is now proposing to build a gambling mecca. That’s what it’s called, a gambling mecca next to the Mets stadium in Queens. How much might it cost? Brace yourself, $8 billion, in other words, this business is so big and it’s growing so fast that you have investors willing to put $8 billion into one location in order to create a gambling mecca in the United States.

Okay, let’s just do a little bit of history here. Was there a gambling mecca in the United States before? And the answer is, well, there was, but before there was, there wasn’t. And after there was, there kind of isn’t again, or at least the virus is spreading very, very fast. So let’s take this chronologically. Before there was legalized betting, there was a cultural consensus in the United States that gambling ought not to be legalized and ought not to happen. The law was understood to be making a moral statement, and that moral statement was that you ought not to put your money at risk by gambling. Gambling was associated with the lowest levels of society, with what was done in dark corners on the streets. And those who were designated as bookies and bettors, they were both fearing the kind of raids that would come periodically by police.

And of course, you also have the reality that when you have something like that which is culturally understood to be a vice, you have an underground that is created to supply that vice. And of course, that comes with an entire system of what would later be called organized crime. Now, organized crime wasn’t only about betting. It also grew leaps and bounds during the period of prohibition, when alcoholic beverages were illegal in terms of sale in the United States for a defined period of time. We don’t have time to recite that history, it is just important to recognize that when you look at vices like prostitution, gambling, liquor, and eventually narcotics. By the way, many of the mobsters tried to stay out of the narcotics business out of a sense of the fact that that was too immoral, even for organized crime. But eventually you have the argument that if others are doing it, you’re just letting them take the entire business. You’re not getting your cut.

So eventually, basically all the mob bosses, all the mafia families, all the rest, they got involved in the sale of narcotics, the trafficking in narcotics, what a dark business. But let’s understand, the same worldview, the same moral argument is being shared by an awful lot of people wearing business clothes in the United States, and that includes many of our elected representatives. You have state-by-state saying, “Look, that state is getting a lot of income from gambling. We’re missing our cut.” I’ll just say that that argument is the same argument whether it’s going to be taking place among mob bosses or among politicians, of both parties. But we’re talking chronology here. There once was a time when the entire business was illegal. And by the way, there were ways around that, of course, one of the ways around that was to go on a boat and go offshore so that you got out of American legal jurisdiction.

And so there were basically floating games, floating casinos, and that was also a part of the riverboat business at a certain stage in American history. But then came Las Vegas. We don’t have time to go into the entire legislative history. But during the period, especially the 1950s and the 1960s, the state of Nevada decided that it would legalize certain vices. And by the way, it wasn’t only gambling, it was also in certain contexts, prostitution as well. And the idea was brilliant, at least in business terms, you could come up with an enormous supply answer to the demand question when it comes to something like both prostitution and especially legalized gambling. And Las Vegas was enticingly close to the burgeoning population in the state of California. And of course in time, Nevada came up with not just one, but two different say capitals of gambling, by the time you look at Las Vegas and at Reno. Nonetheless, this was a massive concentration of gambling.

It was legalized gambling, and that was largely a monopoly held by Las Vegas for a very long time. You had of course these massive casinos, this massive gambling industry. And then you had the arrival of the very same thing in New Jersey, there in Atlantic City. And of course, Donald Trump was very much involved in the casino business in Atlantic City. How did it come that there were these two legal centers? Well, that took congressional action and eventually it was the Supreme Court of the United States that ruled just in recent years, that it was unconstitutional for national legislation to privilege two places in respective states, in which gambling could be legalized. And you often hear these days, people say that nationwide legalized gambling came about because of an action of the Supreme Court. Well, it did come in one sense by an action of the Supreme Court, but it wasn’t an action legalizing gambling, it was an action rendering unconstitutional, ruling as unconstitutional, legislation that had created these two islands of gambling amid 50 states.

So the chronology more recently is that you’ve had a spread of gambling. And by the way, it’s been uneven, it’s been interesting. For one thing, various court decisions and legislative deals were made to enable legalized gambling, including the presence of casinos in territories controlled by Native Americans. And so you had tribal casinos that emerged in several areas. You can drive across the interstates in Oklahoma and see something like this, but it’s also found in California, it’s found in the Seminole areas in Florida. You have this organized gambling that is very much a part of tourism and all the rest. But even as one state looking at another state with a lottery says, “We are forfeiting that income. We need to get our slice, our piece of the action.” You also have city by city trying to make the same kind of decisions. That’s one of the reasons why the city of New York is looking at a vast investment in gambling. But they’re going to do that, the politicians in New York, in a way they think will bring them the most money and the most positive visibility.

But of course that also means they’re going to largely be denying the moral downside to gambling. And we as Christians have to understand there’s a huge moral downside to gambling. So we are going to look at legalized gambling in so many different ways, arriving across America. And of course the invention of the internet, that whole new digital dimension has brought a rapid expansion of gambling. Still, it’s important to recognize that the clear distinction even between legalized gambling and illegal gambling, well, all you have to do is look at recent headlines to understand that is becoming a blurry issue. And here’s where we understand a society that begins to loosen its morality on gambling is going to find itself in a very difficult position to say, “We’re going to stop at this point.” So okay, we cross that line, let’s draw a new line. That’s just the way it works. And pretty soon you’ve got a casino next door.

It is estimated by the way, that the big money we’re talking about is going to get even bigger. The Economist estimates that by the end of this decade, that’s just say, six years away. By the end of this decade, Americans are projected to wager as much as $630 billion online.

Part II

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‘Gambling is My Personal Form of Entertainment’: Love of Neighbor Should Cause Christians Pause About Partaking in the Gambling Industry in Any Way

So let’s just look at this in a biblical perspective. The main biblical issue here has to do with stewardship, and then alongside stewardship comes justice, love of neighbor. So the stewardship issue is very clear in the wisdom literature in the Bible, for instance, in the book of Proverbs, there are warnings against those who simply act wastefully. They have holes in their pockets, their money just disappears. You have warnings in the Old Testament about ill-gotten gain, and of course that’s repeated in the morality of the New Testament.

And so the worker is worthy of his hire. That is to say the worker is worthy of a wage, investment is honored. Jesus even honors investment in terms of his moral teachings and his parables. But gambling is something that the Scripture clearly does not allow for. Now, it’s interesting by the way, to hear many people today, just in terms of the righteousness question, the inherent morality question. I hear some younger Christians, especially young Christian men making the argument, “I’m not really betting, I’m just paying a certain amount of money for a very fun form of entertainment.” And I just want to take that and let’s take it honestly for a moment. I’m going to say that it just might be possible that for you that’s what this is. So I don’t want to say that can never be the case.

I think it can be the case that you have even Christian young men, you have Christians who say, “I would otherwise spend this money on another form of legitimate entertainment. I am going to bet in terms of my favorite sports team, or I’m going to bet in terms of some other athletic context. I’m going to do something clean and honest. I’m going to have fun with my friends. I’m going to say, “I’m going to spend X dollars on this night and I’m simply going to enjoy the time with my friends.”” Is that unrighteous? Well, I think as an individual act, it probably is not unrighteous. The problem for Christians is that our individual acts are part of a larger moral context. And this is why I mentioned love of neighbor and justice, because the injustice of the gambling industry has to do with what is displaced by that industry and the lives that are harmed.

Even The Economist, again, their headline was “America’s Gambling Boom Should be Celebrated, not Feared.” It does acknowledge that there’s a downside to gambling, but they overcome that by coming back and saying, “There are bigger issues than the harms done by gambling, either to the individual’s gambling or to the family of the person who’s gambling or even to the economy in terms of illegitimate aspirations and motivations, incentives.” The argument here is, “In fact, much about today’s gambling boom should be celebrated as an expansion of people’s freedom to lead their lives as they choose.” Okay, now again, if we’re talking about an individual, we still have a problem because there are acts that are inherently right and wrong. There are acts that are righteous and unrighteous. The Economist writing from a secular worldview actually doesn’t even seem to accept that that is true. But I want to take it to the next step. Let’s get back to love of neighbor for a moment.

If we are bound by love of neighbor, that means that we cannot hope for the success of an industry that is going to do harm to the larger society and individuals. Now, The Economist says, “You do the math and there is more good here than harm.” This is where Christians have to say, “I find that to be a very debatable argument.” And that kind of argument is what comes with the argument for expanding just about any mode or any dimension of human liberty. So I find it very interesting. I want to go back to that sentence, “In fact, much about today’s gambling boom should be celebrated as an expansion of people’s freedom to lead their lives as they choose,” that very straightforward and I would say very reckless assertion of human moral liberty. It’s a huge problem because you can fill in the blank about what activity you’re talking about with any number of words. I don’t think The Economist is going to endorse, at least I don’t think they’re prepared to endorse such things today. Again, make one line, cross that line, draw another line, cross that line. The beat goes on.

Part III

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Online Sports Betting, Cryptocurrency, and the Stock Market: One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Okay, The Economist series also makes another very interesting connection, and that is the fact that especially among young men, there is a growing connection between gambling and sports. So you take two things that interest young men and you put them together. Guess what? You’ve got an explosive combination. And we’re talking about a massive growth in sports betting. It is suggested that the biggest growth in the United States in betting is precisely this. You’re looking at sports betting at about $130 billion, gaming or slot machines are only about $87 billion. Worldwide by the way, gambling breaks down this way, traditional casinos are a very large sector, and especially in the international scene. You have entire principalities, I’ll just put it that way, that have basically built their economy on gambling. And this is as old as some principalities in Europe, and it’s as new as some islands which are actually under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, a party that looks the other way when it comes to capitalism operating in a casino of which it gets the cut.

But let’s return to this combination, especially among young men in the United States. That is the fastest growth in the gambling industry, by the way. It’s young men, that is the target audience. And when you add sports and gambling together, that creates a big combination. And then you have a problem and that is that a lot of people, a lot of these young men probably have favorite teams that aren’t winning and might predictably be losing. And so that complicates the betting situation. And so you have to put it into a larger context with a pool of different teams, with all kinds of different criteria and contingencies. You make it interesting such that the bettor can believe there’s actually something to the bet.

Okay, at this point, as we’re bringing this to a close, it is interesting that The Economist also mentions another form of betting, and this has to do with cryptocurrency and certain forms of financial investment. Are they betting or are they not? Now, this question has come often, and I just want to remind people that in the traditional stock market, in the traditional markets, it’s not gambling. And that is because it is based upon real value, and it is based upon a real business model that is at least promising, one way or another, to bring about a return on investment. And when it comes to that, of course, evil things can be done in that system, but the system itself is not evil. It is not wrong, it is not unrighteous.

But you look at gambling on the other hand and you say, “Well, that’s a very distinct thing.” Well, what about a situation in which it’s not so distinct. And distinction between investment and gambling. But when it comes to cryptocurrency, and also when it comes to what The Economist identifies as the boom and “short-dated options,” the reality is that even The Economist and if anyone knows the economy, it ought to be The Economist. Even The Economist comes back and says, “You know, that actually is probably a form of gambling.” The Economist puts it simply in one sentence, “These derivatives work a bit like lottery tickets.” There you got it.

By the way, another footnote in a paper done on sports betting finds that when you have legalized sports betting, the average gambler, the average household that gambles, tends to spend about $720 a year on it. So just to repeat $30 or $40 one weekend may not seem like that much, but it does add up to something like an average at present of $720 a year. You look at the economy, that is not an insignificant amount of money. Well, all right, the bottom line in this is that the Christian Biblical worldview explains at least how we should think about gambling and how the complications of the current landscape requires to think kind of carefully about what exactly it means in this context or that context.

But there’s another bigger lesson here, and that is that when you have this much money at stake that just about everyone believes, “I’m going to be able to rationalize this and I want my cut, I want my piece of this.” And that’s why jurisdiction by jurisdiction state by state, city by city, and as The Economist indicates nation by nation makes the decision. We’re going to get into this, we’re not going to get into it too much. We’re going to get into it only a little, before you know it, the government itself is put in a position where it has to radically expand gambling because it needs to expand its own income. That’s the way it works. But nonetheless, rarely do you have this kind of exposure, this kind of consideration of an issue of moral significance like gambling in a multi article series, in a periodical like The Economist, that too tells you, “Yes, indeed, this is a very, very, very big deal.”

Part IV

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Joe Biden is Doing Even Less: President Biden is Already Passing the Presidential Baton to President-Elect Trump, and Democrats are Furious

All right, let’s shift to something else. And that has to do with interesting headlines in recent days about the increased activity of President-elect Donald Trump and the decreased activity of the current President Joe Biden. So you have a headline like this in the Wall Street Journal on Monday this week “Biden Eases off-stage Irking Democrats,” the subhead, “Well before Trump takes office, foreign leaders are already taking cues from him.” So the context of this is the insinuation that there’s something here that’s controversial, something that’s newsworthy, something that’s without precedent, that requires just a little bit of consideration. First of all, we need to recognize that in the original constitutional order, even as the elections were held in the fall, the new president did not take office until the 4th of March of the following year. And so you had weeks upon weeks of waiting for the new administration. And if you add up going from the first week of November to the first week of March, I mean you’re talking about a third of the year, you’re talking about a lot of territory.

And that became problematic, you can understand why in the early national experience of the United States, that might make sense because you’re traveling by horseback, by stagecoach. It’s rather difficult to assemble a government even after an election. It takes a number of weeks. But in the modern age, that became ridiculous. And as a matter of fact, within the 20th century, it became untenable. And so in the early decades of the 20th century leading up to the Roosevelt administration, you had a shift in a constitutional amendment. You had among other things, a shift to Inauguration Day, the beginning of the term, to January the 20th of the year following the election. So that reduced by several weeks, getting close to two months, the time of wait between one administration and another, that time of transition.

Now, there has to be some time of transition because a newly elected president has to assemble an administration and put people in place. And that requires not only a personnel process for a presidential appointment, it also requires in the case of about 1100 different positions, Senate confirmation. So that is a time-consuming process. And by the way, that time-consuming process will go on long into the first year of the President’s term. But nonetheless, crucial cabinet members and others have to be in place in order for the transition to take place. And it is complicated. But the articles that are appearing in recent days are pointing out that to an unusual degree, the incoming administration of Donald Trump is already very loud about foreign policy issues and fairly loud about domestic policy issues and the current Democratic administration of Joe Biden going off the stage. Well, it is unusually quiet and non-activist on so many of these issues. And remember that headline, it is a situation that is “Irking Democrats,” which is to say, Democrats wish President Biden were a bit more energetic in these last weeks of his administration.

But this is where Americans have to sit back for a moment and say, “Wait just a minute. Let’s recall the reason that Joe Biden left the race months ago is that the Democratic Party propped him up as if he were still in full operational condition when he wasn’t. And when problems of aging and mental incapacitation were clearly, at least in terms of reduced mental agility, these things were already very clear. So why are you surprised that a president who’s done very little for a considerable amount of time, is doing even less in the remaining days of his administration?” Frankly, I think there are also many Americans who are quite relieved that Joe Biden is doing even less during this time.

But I want to point to something else, and this is just a worldview observation. When you have a democratic transition in an office such as President of the United States, when you have a clear succession of one administration to another, and when you have a clear demonstration of this is the past and this is the future, guess what? All the energy goes to the future, not to the past. That is just a factor of human nature. That’s just how it works.

And in the fast-paced world we live in today, and in the rather complicated world we live in today with real military threats, change of government in Syria, dangers coming from China and so many other places, war in Israel, and there in Gaza, there are all kinds of reasons why the world is quickly asking, “Where is America on these issues?” And if you want to ask that question, you decreasingly have any interest in asking it of Joe Biden. Increasingly, everyone’s asking that question of Donald Trump or the people around Donald Trump.

And by the way, the President-elect went to the opening ceremony for Notre Dame Cathedral there in Paris where he sat with the outgoing first Lady of the United States, Jill Biden, in an unprecedented picture in terms of American history. And yet, Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, really didn’t need any more time with President Biden. He wanted as much time as he could get with President-elect Donald Trump. Even if people in the United States don’t seem to understand how the presidency works, I guarantee you that foreign politicians and heads of government understand very clearly how power works. But Joe Biden is still the President of the United States, and that means that at least constitutionally, he is still capable of exercising presidential power for good or for ill.

Other issues of controversy await. We’ll turn to them another day.