Economic Costs of Gambling

[South Park]

Few governments realize that but the majority of the government knows that there are revenues, taxes and employment in the casino industry, this is a billion-dollar industry, and they employ millions of people and many companies worked and supply materials to the casinos, and those things you've mentioned are the collateral damages but not enough for government to stop the operations of gambling.

Gambling is indeed a multi billion dollar industry and its no denial and you can be seen on some biggest gambling capital places in the world on how much they've been regenerating on a single day in terms of profits or revenue and take for example in Macau which is only a very small city but a very progressive one because of gambling revenues where people tend to play even if it turns out to be expensive.This proves out on how big and how important gambling industry is for some
countries in terms of progress and a development. Some people are just way too judgmental that much when it comes to gambling.

That huge revenues plus many corrupt officials, all those matters are about the money government can take from this multi billion business,

They don't care about the damages as they are collecting taxes and underground fees from those casino owners who are facilitating inside their jurisdictions.

More on balancing the benefits and the damages, money talks louder than anything else.

As I said before things are never that simple, almost everything has upsides and downsides, it is true that gambling can bring some downsides to the community as people could get addicted to it and lose their money, however is this enough so governments ban gambling? No, this is not enough, if governments banned gambling then illegal casinos will surge and people will still get addicted, so governments prefer to make gambling legal as there is not really too much of a difference in the number of people that get addicted while at the same time they get some taxes out of it.

[KTChampions]

That's right but that can happen with any addiction, if someone is addicted to drugs it's even worst. I am not advocating for gambling but unless addicted, people can enjoy gambling just like they enjoy trips and other forms of entertainment.

I agree gambling is not coming for free of cost still I guess spending some money for entertainment purposes is not a big deal for most people with respect to their upper living standards. So, enjoying gambling within a limit and not getting addicted to it by playing it responsibly are the few things, every gambler must need to remember always while engaging in gambling.

Yes, gambling is a common human activity, if you do not take the extremes (which are harmful everywhere). Gambling creates a lot of jobs, a lot of taxes are paid from the money that circulates there, in addition, gambling gives many people positive emotions and hope, I think this positive impact outweighs the negative aspects.

[DU18]

That's right but that can happen with any addiction, if someone is addicted to drugs it's even worst. I am not advocating for gambling but unless addicted, people can enjoy gambling just like they enjoy trips and other forms of entertainment.

I agree gambling is not coming for free of cost still I guess spending some money for entertainment purposes is not a big deal for most people with respect to their upper living standards. So, enjoying gambling within a limit and not getting addicted to it by playing it responsibly are the few things, every gambler must need to remember always while engaging in gambling.

Yes, gambling is a common human activity, if you do not take the extremes (which are harmful everywhere). Gambling creates a lot of jobs, a lot of taxes are paid from the money that circulates there, in addition, gambling gives many people positive emotions and hope, I think this positive impact outweighs the negative aspects.

If I'm honest, I think that gambling has even more negative impacts than positive impacts, and maybe for some gamblers, gambling may bring them profit, because they can win games with various tricks because they are used to playing, and gambling can also increase their wealth if they win, but apart from that, the negative impact of gambling in my opinion is quite large, besides being able to cause depression and even suicide, gambling also causes addiction for the players and can even lead to poverty due to uncontrolled gambling, and worse Gambling can even destroy our homes and many gamblers end up in jail for committing crimes after they lose money in the game.
I think the most important thing in gambling is that we are really able to control ourselves.

[Fortify]

1. Gambling in fact has many negative externalities. If someone gets addicted, the likelihood is much higher to be depressed. Depression is factor, which leads to high costs for the society.

2. Gambling addiction leads to economic costs because of crime actions. Other market actors have to increase their security standards, which means higher costs.

3. Many gambling addicts go as a consequence to jail. Jail means EXTREMELY high costs to society.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

There are quite a few external costs as you've highlighted and relatively few benefits, especially as winners who get lucky once have a tendency to pour it all back in. As with things like alcohol, as long as it is approached responsibly by an educated population then it can be fine. However the casinos and bookmakers should definitely play their part, by allowing people to self-exclude and preventing playing for periods of time when the behavior is erratic (such as jumping from a $10 weekly bet to a $1k daily bet). The government also needs to heavily monitor casinos as they have a long held reputation as an easy place to launder money because everyone is playing with cash.

[KTChampions]

Yes, gambling is a common human activity, if you do not take the extremes (which are harmful everywhere). Gambling creates a lot of jobs, a lot of taxes are paid from the money that circulates there, in addition, gambling gives many people positive emotions and hope, I think this positive impact outweighs the negative aspects.

If I'm honest, I think that gambling has even more negative impacts than positive impacts, and maybe for some gamblers, gambling may bring them profit, because they can win games with various tricks because they are used to playing, and gambling can also increase their wealth if they win, but apart from that, the negative impact of gambling in my opinion is quite large, besides being able to cause depression and even suicide, gambling also causes addiction for the players and can even lead to poverty due to uncontrolled gambling, and worse Gambling can even destroy our homes and many gamblers end up in jail for committing crimes after they lose money in the game.
I think the most important thing in gambling is that we are really able to control ourselves.

But the negative that you listed is not an integral part of gambling. These are erroneous actions of people, but the same actions can be caused by other reasons/motives. Therefore, if we objectively separate the causes and consequences, we should not attribute to gambling the negative that is caused by extraneous factors.

[paxmao]

...

1. Gambling in fact has many negative externalities. If someone gets addicted, the likelihood is much higher to be depressed. Depression is factor, which leads to high costs for the society.

2. Gambling addiction leads to economic costs because of crime actions. Other market actors have to increase their security standards, which means higher costs.

3. Many gambling addicts go as a consequence to jail. Jail means EXTREMELY high costs to society.

...

I do not agree with 3, gambling and jail are not that related.

Yes, gambling has many negative externalities, it is well know. It is particularly troublesome in the physical location of the gaming since it attracts the type of cohorts that live sucking of sucking the blood from the fortunate players. It is also linked to alcohol, drugs, prostitution, etc... Yet it is an economic activity so it also bring employment and benefits and it is not that different from many other activities with strong negative externalities, such as mining, nuclear energy, plastic production just to mention a few. Even cars pollute.

[mv1986]

...

1. Gambling in fact has many negative externalities. If someone gets addicted, the likelihood is much higher to be depressed. Depression is factor, which leads to high costs for the society.

2. Gambling addiction leads to economic costs because of crime actions. Other market actors have to increase their security standards, which means higher costs.

3. Many gambling addicts go as a consequence to jail. Jail means EXTREMELY high costs to society.

...

I do not agree with 3, gambling and jail are not that related.

Yes, gambling has many negative externalities, it is well know. It is particularly troublesome in the physical location of the gaming since it attracts the type of cohorts that live sucking of sucking the blood from the fortunate players. It is also linked to alcohol, drugs, prostitution, etc... Yet it is an economic activity so it also bring employment and benefits and it is not that different from many other activities with strong negative externalities, such as mining, nuclear energy, plastic production just to mention a few. Even cars pollute.

I am not quite sure if this has been posted or answered here, but it would be interesting to know if there have been any studies done on whether there is a higher positive correlation between gamblers and jail time than between non-gamblers and jail time. Intuitively I would expect there is a higher positive correlation, but I would be interested in knowing by how much if that is the case. Does anyone know anything about that?

[zanezane]

On personal finance, gambling isn't going to help but in a community level, I am pretty sure that gambling helps a lot because they are a business that pays taxes and those taxes will be the ones that we use to fund the building of roads.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Exactly, they will care much more about profits than the wellbeing of their users because what's the point of curing your customers if them being sick is the way that you can make a lot of money. Also, regarding the economic cost, I think gamblong industry is a big contributor with taxes and tourism, just look at Las Vegas, Macau and Hongkong.

Yes, both of you are right as long as the casino can attract many gamblers and they can get more money from them. The casino will not care about the addicted gamblers, how they can solve the addiction, and how the gambler can avoid committing a crime. A gambling industry contributes a big income for the government in the country that allows gambling. The casino does not think much about the side effect of the player in the gambling games because they think that is the gambler's responsibility.

That's what a business should do, you don't blame the knife companies when there is a stabbing or you cut yourself while preparing your vegetables, that's the same for any business, they offer the product or service and it's your responsibility on what you are going to do with it.

[michellee]

Exactly, they will care much more about profits than the wellbeing of their users because what's the point of curing your customers if them being sick is the way that you can make a lot of money. Also, regarding the economic cost, I think gamblong industry is a big contributor with taxes and tourism, just look at Las Vegas, Macau and Hongkong.

Yes, both of you are right as long as the casino can attract many gamblers and they can get more money from them. The casino will not care about the addicted gamblers, how they can solve the addiction, and how the gambler can avoid committing a crime. A gambling industry contributes a big income for the government in the country that allows gambling. The casino does not think much about the side effect of the player in the gambling games because they think that is the gambler's responsibility.

That's what a business should do, you don't blame the knife companies when there is a stabbing or you cut yourself while preparing your vegetables, that's the same for any business, they offer the product or service and it's your responsibility on what you are going to do with it.

I wish people who play gambling can realize that when they lose their money, they do not blame the casino but instead think of what they already did. It needs the courage to accept the fact because it can help us move on and have a chance to be better than before. If you can learn from your mistake, you will grow and become wiser than before to know what you will do when you play gambling.

[smyslov]

The economic cost is really huge but if you weigh on the costs, the government benefits will outweigh the personal cost of those who suffer from gambling, gambling is a multi billion dollar industry and the revenue they are going to get is very huge that it can sustain a lot of government projects, and not only that they are employing thousands of people and many businesses are relying on the gambling industry.

[BTCLiz]

The economic cost is really huge but if you weigh on the costs, the government benefits will outweigh the personal cost of those who suffer from gambling, gambling is a multi billion dollar industry and the revenue they are going to get is very huge that it can sustain a lot of government projects, and not only that they are employing thousands of people and many businesses are relying on the gambling industry.

Could you please underline your statement with facts and numbers? Your statement is only true if and only if the costs of gambling are lower then the benefits. The point is that studies are missing regarding gambling and economic costs as secondary or third effects, because they are really hard to estimate.

[AicecreaME]

Due to this pandemic, it's hard to show yourself and sometimes we got easily irritated because of the environment because this is not our real environment like staying at home and it's just a different way to us.

Some of them want to release that boredom and trying to enjoy themselves and try to gamble but not all the time we are winning gambling which causes the player more depression and anger to the game some of them want to urge get their money back by continuously playing but the result is not in favor of them.

This is the reason why at the start we need to know the possible outcome and the risk we will face if we try to play gambling. It's the tolerance of the player how it goes

I agree with this.

People can't get in their zone mode when playing in gambling because of the pandemic, physical casinos has been shut down so the only option is online gambling. You'll definitely be irritated when you lost because you're not use to it, others are too desperate on making money therefore they bit the trap of online gambling as well resulting to another financial problem.

So the cost of it is indeed expensive, so much more in the long run.

[BTCLiz]

Due to this pandemic, it's hard to show yourself and sometimes we got easily irritated because of the environment because this is not our real environment like staying at home and it's just a different way to us.

Some of them want to release that boredom and trying to enjoy themselves and try to gamble but not all the time we are winning gambling which causes the player more depression and anger to the game some of them want to urge get their money back by continuously playing but the result is not in favor of them.

This is the reason why at the start we need to know the possible outcome and the risk we will face if we try to play gambling. It's the tolerance of the player how it goes

I agree with this.

People can't get in their zone mode when playing in gambling because of the pandemic, physical casinos has been shut down so the only option is online gambling. You'll definitely be irritated when you lost because you're not use to it, others are too desperate on making money therefore they bit the trap of online gambling as well resulting to another financial problem.

So the cost of it is indeed expensive, so much more in the long run.

You are mentioning a very important point. Especially the long-run-pespective is important in this case. Lets take a look at a father with 5 children. He gets addicted to gambling and looses so much money that he cant pay for food. The children grow up in a terrible environment with an increased likelihood of themself getting addicted to something. --> More economic costs.

[owengtam09]

Hi,

in this thread I would like to address a very important topic: Economic Costs of gambling.

From economic theory we know the concept of externalities:

In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit that is imposed on a third party who did not agree to incur that cost or benefit. For the purpose of these statements, overall cost and benefit to society is defined as the sum of the imputed monetary value of benefits and costs to all parties involved.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality



1. Gambling in fact has many negative externalities. If someone gets addicted, the likelihood is much higher to be depressed. Depression is factor, which leads to high costs for the society.

2. Gambling addiction leads to economic costs because of crime actions. Other market actors have to increase their security standards, which means higher costs.

3. Many gambling addicts go as a consequence to jail. Jail means EXTREMELY high costs to society.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

This can possibly happen but gambling is not a place for addicts people, it can lead them "just like what you have said", 1) depression 2) crime, and 3) go to jail. We, at our own seek, should avoid already those possibilities for us to not get depressed. All gamblers should also be responsible with their responsibilities. I hope you already know what I meant.

[mv1986]

Hi,

in this thread I would like to address a very important topic: Economic Costs of gambling.

From economic theory we know the concept of externalities:

In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit that is imposed on a third party who did not agree to incur that cost or benefit. For the purpose of these statements, overall cost and benefit to society is defined as the sum of the imputed monetary value of benefits and costs to all parties involved.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality



1. Gambling in fact has many negative externalities. If someone gets addicted, the likelihood is much higher to be depressed. Depression is factor, which leads to high costs for the society.

2. Gambling addiction leads to economic costs because of crime actions. Other market actors have to increase their security standards, which means higher costs.

3. Many gambling addicts go as a consequence to jail. Jail means EXTREMELY high costs to society.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

This can possibly happen but gambling is not a place for addicts people, it can lead them "just like what you have said", 1) depression 2) crime, and 3) go to jail. We, at our own seek, should avoid already those possibilities for us to not get depressed. All gamblers should also be responsible with their responsibilities. I hope you already know what I meant.

Gambling can also be a viable option for those who are depressed already. It can function like alcohol. It is not always the other way around, it is not that you first gamble and then get depressed. You can be depressed but see an exit in gambling because it makes you forget your problems for a second. Sadly though it is mostly causing more problems afterwards as you are most likely not fully in control of your mind if you are depressed and therefore feel like gambling.

[BTCLiz]

Gambling can also be a viable option for those who are depressed already. It can function like alcohol. It is not always the other way around, it is not that you first gamble and then get depressed. You can be depressed but see an exit in gambling because it makes you forget your problems for a second. Sadly though it is mostly causing more problems afterwards as you are most likely not fully in control of your mind if you are depressed and therefore feel like gambling.

You are completely right. For some people the depression starts first. I would point out that in my opinion it starts for the most people with a depression and afterwards resulting in some kind of addiction to make the feel better. What is your opinion on the % of people starting with a depression first?

[KTChampions]

Gambling can also be a viable option for those who are depressed already. It can function like alcohol. It is not always the other way around, it is not that you first gamble and then get depressed. You can be depressed but see an exit in gambling because it makes you forget your problems for a second. Sadly though it is mostly causing more problems afterwards as you are most likely not fully in control of your mind if you are depressed and therefore feel like gambling.

An interesting point of view and I would add to it - a person who has gone from problems (from real life) to gambling does not necessarily become addicted. Some begin to study mathematics and algorithms in depth (to try to surpass the casino), someone analysts (to surpass bookmakers), in principle, this is an excellent self-development and can be a good impetus to become successful in a new field for themselves.

[passwordnow]

Gambling can also be a viable option for those who are depressed already. It can function like alcohol. It is not always the other way around, it is not that you first gamble and then get depressed. You can be depressed but see an exit in gambling because it makes you forget your problems for a second. Sadly though it is mostly causing more problems afterwards as you are most likely not fully in control of your mind if you are depressed and therefore feel like gambling.

Depressed gamblers are often seen to be alone and are happy with what they do. They might keep going and whether they're losing as long as it's giving happiness to them, they don't mind about the cost and the casino profits from that person.
There are times that it's not just all about the money but also we'll never know what a gambler is going through. But most of us, we know that it's all about the money, whether you're for fun or for the profit.

[mv1986]

Gambling can also be a viable option for those who are depressed already. It can function like alcohol. It is not always the other way around, it is not that you first gamble and then get depressed. You can be depressed but see an exit in gambling because it makes you forget your problems for a second. Sadly though it is mostly causing more problems afterwards as you are most likely not fully in control of your mind if you are depressed and therefore feel like gambling.

Depressed gamblers are often seen to be alone and are happy with what they do. They might keep going and whether they're losing as long as it's giving happiness to them, they don't mind about the cost and the casino profits from that person.
There are times that it's not just all about the money but also we'll never know what a gambler is going through. But most of us, we know that it's all about the money, whether you're for fun or for the profit.

But this is quite the stretch for the term of happiness. Sure everyone defines happiness differently, but with all due respect if you are sad and depressed, what you feel while you are gambling isn't really happiness. I just don't buy that.

Happiness is when you have a basic good and satisfactory mood, when you like life and are able to cope with difficulties optimistically and bravely. Happiness isn't when you forget your problems because you focus on hitting numbers in roulette. Happiness is when you have strong and lovely relationships to other people. If you have all other things around you in order, then I believe gambling can make you happy. Maybe on a vacation with a great family around you, when you decide to visit a casino for a night, that can make you happy. But gambling around the clock while having a bunch of problems to solve in real life isn't about happiness.