At Deseret, I’m writing on the particular perversity of legalized sports gambling. States touting possible revenue from taxes aim to profit from the degradation of their citizens.
It’s as though a state instituted a tax on adultery, and then began promoting websites like AshleyMadison and held press conferences with prostitution rings. By advertising invitations to unfaithfulness, the state would be hoping the private sins of their citizens could fill a hole in the public budget. The more money adultery brought into state coffers, the more a state would be caught in a perverse bind of its own making. If marriages got stronger, the state would be poorer.
A state that relies on gambling revenue is similarly reliant on worsening the lives of its citizens. It plans to fix crumbling infrastructure by eroding the financial stability of its families, to fill potholes by laying pits in the path of its people.