This essay written by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of The American Interest. It is excerpted and adapted from For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt
During the Great Depression, leaders like New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (watch the brief news clip below) aggressively went after those who preyed on the financial struggles of
This study by the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems at McGill University finds “approximately one-fifth of parents reported buying a lottery ticket for their children” in Canada. Your Mother
The Massachusetts Lottery is, what the author of this Boston Globe article calls, “a Robin Hood in reverse”. Like most lotteries, it generates the most profit from poorer communities, filled
“When the state joins forces with private industry in order to sponsor and propagate an old human vice, the results can devastate both civic life and, in the long run,
The nation’s most respected consumer advocate, Ralph Nader, speaks powerfully about how government-sanctioned gambling lowers our standard of living and exploits and defrauds citizens.
Below is a compelling, hard-hitting column by Esquire’s Charlie Pierce about what it means to turn America into a casino republic, declaring “The United States of America is now nothing
There is no grassroots movement anywhere in America calling for regional casinos. The push is completely driven by very powerful corporate gambling interests that are dominating state legislatures across the
This TIME Magazine article from 1953 offers a glimpse at the period following World War II when states recriminalized slot machines. “Though the state legally controlled them, the slots acted,
Yale Law School’s Stephen Carter wrote a terrific column in April 2011 on state lotteries. Carter writes: “Why on earth do we allow the government to hold a monopoly on
