What's absurd to me is that it's not like you couldn't bet on sports before, you just had to have some buddies at work, or a sibling who or something who was interested.
That doesn't allow for the quantity of gambling necessary to immiserate people en masse though.
Which also contributed to it draining income from the community.
If you and your brother in law trade the same 20 bucks back and forth over a few years of 2 person bets then all you did was make the game more exciting. If you did the same but gave a quarter of that to the US government to buy bombs and tanks for the local police department then you could be hundreds or thousands in the hole each after a few years.
What's absurd to me is that it's not like you couldn't bet on sports before, you just had to have some buddies at work, or a sibling who or something who was interested.
That doesn't allow for the quantity of gambling necessary to immiserate people en masse though.
Also all that income was untaxed now they cut in the government it's fully legalized.
Which also contributed to it draining income from the community.
If you and your brother in law trade the same 20 bucks back and forth over a few years of 2 person bets then all you did was make the game more exciting. If you did the same but gave a quarter of that to the US government to buy bombs and tanks for the local police department then you could be hundreds or thousands in the hole each after a few years.