What gets me most upset -- when politicians promote funding a casino, claiming it will boost the economy. If the money comes from the same area, it simply means people are spending money on "nothing" and the money goes to a handful of business owners, to build more nothing-generating machines.
There will be jobs, sure... but when workers want to move to a new company, most have a limited skill set, other than basic hospitality and tourism/customer service.
And yes there will be people coming from outside the area... but those people come from somewhere, have families to support, bills to pay, addictions to restrain. The money comes out of one local economy and goes to another. Does that help a state?
Adding a black hole to a local economy saps the people, distracts them from spending effort making money through skill and expertise, gives them false hopes, and builds unnecessary addictions. It is the worst shepherding model I can imagine, with the exception of promoting hallucinogenics distribution and watching everyone physically fall apart.
I do not think buying a couple lottery tickets is wrong, and I sometimes buy one on my birthday. But I get squeamish about doing it because my feelings are so strong on the whole principle -- of pretending that it's helping our economy.
I had a relative that complained their spouse used to cover a friend's gambling debts with their grocery money. People can't control their obsessions as well as they imagine they can.
When church's have raffles I'm strongly against it the same way that I'm against lottery.
I've wonder about that. Haven't been in churches that do that, but it's very common around here. One church even owned a large bingo hall in the community.
