A few years ago I would have agreed with gambling being legal. However, we now have the casino's in the world trying to outgrow one another right in our own backyards across America and the increase in bankruptcy cases and home foreclosure's have grown exponentially.
The sad thing about it to is the ones who are barely making it are the same ones who head to the casino pay check in hopes of that big score. When they lose as they will sooner or later, it turns into a downward spiral that gets them deeper and deeper into dept.
Whether you call it a disease, weakness, good old fun or the work of the devil the bottom line it is not productive for our society except for the few on the top of the feeding chain. In the long run we all pay for legalized gaming.
Heres an example:
Last year I was volunteering for 5 months at a local hospital. The night janitor is a guy I talked to everyday I was there. He is hard working family guy who owns his own house and from all outward appearances doing fine. This night he really looked bad so I asked him if he was all right. He confided in me that he was in trouble. It seems he has a gambling problem. A problem he never knew he had until one day a few years back he stopped at the casino on his way home from work and won a few bucks.
Well that turned into a few times a week and before you know it he was several thousand in dept. By then he said he had to get out of debt so he started using his credit cards to gamble. To make a long story short over the course of the 5 months I knew him he ended up close to $50,000 in dept.
He ended up taking out a second mortgage to get out from under and promised his wife he would not gamble any more. Then he told me a few nights previous to our chat he had stopped by the casino and was going to play just a little. He had been out of dept for less than a week. Well when he lost a few thousand in the first night he paniced and within a week he had lost $27,000 more. Now he had a 50,000 dollar second mortgage and $27,000 on high interest cards.
My first instinct was to yell at him and tell him he was an idiot but when i looked at him I knew i could say nothing worse to him that he had said to himself. I still can hear the last thing he said to me. "Why did I do it?" While I am a firm believer we are responsible for our ations I also believe that all of us have our weaknesses and call it addictive behaiver, lack of will power or what ever you like one thing is certain. Before that casino came to our state, this man may have had the same problem but there was no outlet for him to lose everything he worked for. This is not just a few people that this is happening to here it is believed that over 40% of the people gambling at the casinios are in above their heads and it is impacting the family life. The sad thing is it is not just these people it affects but its their children who suffer. Myself being 23, I'm trying to learn from other peoples mistakes.
Whats worse is that the majority of people this casino employees are making under $20,000 a year making them in a state that considers 18,500 the poverty level part of the working poor. The lions share of the profits go to the top 2% of the organization.
All I can think of to was a article I read in the paper last summer where one of the high mucky mucks in the casinio threw a birthday party for his wife and shelled out over 1 million dollars. I thought, my friends $77,000 paid for about 15 minutes of the party.
It will only take him twenty years to pay it off. :Sad Face:
The sad thing about it to is the ones who are barely making it are the same ones who head to the casino pay check in hopes of that big score. When they lose as they will sooner or later, it turns into a downward spiral that gets them deeper and deeper into dept.
Whether you call it a disease, weakness, good old fun or the work of the devil the bottom line it is not productive for our society except for the few on the top of the feeding chain. In the long run we all pay for legalized gaming.
Heres an example:
Last year I was volunteering for 5 months at a local hospital. The night janitor is a guy I talked to everyday I was there. He is hard working family guy who owns his own house and from all outward appearances doing fine. This night he really looked bad so I asked him if he was all right. He confided in me that he was in trouble. It seems he has a gambling problem. A problem he never knew he had until one day a few years back he stopped at the casino on his way home from work and won a few bucks.
Well that turned into a few times a week and before you know it he was several thousand in dept. By then he said he had to get out of debt so he started using his credit cards to gamble. To make a long story short over the course of the 5 months I knew him he ended up close to $50,000 in dept.
He ended up taking out a second mortgage to get out from under and promised his wife he would not gamble any more. Then he told me a few nights previous to our chat he had stopped by the casino and was going to play just a little. He had been out of dept for less than a week. Well when he lost a few thousand in the first night he paniced and within a week he had lost $27,000 more. Now he had a 50,000 dollar second mortgage and $27,000 on high interest cards.
My first instinct was to yell at him and tell him he was an idiot but when i looked at him I knew i could say nothing worse to him that he had said to himself. I still can hear the last thing he said to me. "Why did I do it?" While I am a firm believer we are responsible for our ations I also believe that all of us have our weaknesses and call it addictive behaiver, lack of will power or what ever you like one thing is certain. Before that casino came to our state, this man may have had the same problem but there was no outlet for him to lose everything he worked for. This is not just a few people that this is happening to here it is believed that over 40% of the people gambling at the casinios are in above their heads and it is impacting the family life. The sad thing is it is not just these people it affects but its their children who suffer. Myself being 23, I'm trying to learn from other peoples mistakes.
Whats worse is that the majority of people this casino employees are making under $20,000 a year making them in a state that considers 18,500 the poverty level part of the working poor. The lions share of the profits go to the top 2% of the organization.
All I can think of to was a article I read in the paper last summer where one of the high mucky mucks in the casinio threw a birthday party for his wife and shelled out over 1 million dollars. I thought, my friends $77,000 paid for about 15 minutes of the party.
It will only take him twenty years to pay it off. :Sad Face:
