It’s
not news that there is a budget crunch in Illinois. An idea that has been
floating around the General Assembly involves putting Government-owned video
poker machines in various bars and dining establishments. This idea seems to
have found its way into Chicago’s City Hall.
The
logic behind this idea certainly does scream “Chicago Democrat,” doesn’t it?
There’s a financial crisis on, so let’s give people a brand new way to toss
away their savings. Good plan.
So
what does this mean for you? Think about walking into one of your favorite
eateries some time and being encountered with a box in the corner, not unlike a
Pac-Man machine. Except this machine is targeted toward adults, and one such
adult is hanging off the front of the machine, mesmerized and hooked. It’s a
video poker machine, and, given what gambling does to many people, it should
not be in the picture. Right now, targets are specifically bars, but
restaurants and diners are not by any means off the table.
Now,
to be fair, like the Lottery, video gambling machines probably would drum up a
few extra quarters for the city or state governments. However, the likely
slight revenue increase does not justify playing on people’s vices—or,
perhaps creating a new vice for those uninitiated Chicagoans—as a
means to suck the change from their pockets.
Don’t
misunderstand me; legalizing gambling is not necessarily a bad move, but the
idea of using it as a means to generate revenue does not have the ring of sound
fiscal policy. The idea is comparable to California’s proposal to legalize
marijuana for the specific purpose of collecting the sales tax revenue it would
generate. We, as a society, need to be discouraging these vices, not using them
to put money into government. Here’s a radical thought: if City Hall and the
General Assembly are finding themselves strapped for cash, why don’t they stop
spending our money?
Freedom
means choice. If someone wants to gamble, that is his or her decision, and I
have no complaint there. I do have an issue with governments endorsing vices
specifically to effectively tax them. Cook County Government is not a casino.
The house always wins, and when the government is the house, the people lose.
Right now, the Illinois Video
Gaming Act allows individual townships and counties to create and enforce their
own bans on video gambling. Cook County recently passed such a ban.
In
a public statement released shortly after the county vote, Tony Peraica,
Commissioner for the 16th District of Cook County, said that the
ordinance banning video gambling “ensures that we will not repeat the mistake
that other communities have made in their mad quest for easy money.”
Remember
that video gaming exists to tempt the user and entice him to continue wasting
his money when he knows that he should stop.
Is
it really so unreasonable to ask people to do their gambling on adult cruises?
Why do we need to bring video gambling into our own backyard? Quite frankly, if
Chicagoans are running out of excuses not to get things done, I can make some
recommendations of time-fillers that cost less and are infinitely less
addictive—such
as chess, MASH reruns, or reading a good book. We do not need gambling to come
to Cook County.