didn't the house pass legislation allowing sports betting like 3 years ago?

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Tax revenue from who? Where do you think this money comes from?

Yeah, gambling doesn't tend to be a very progressive form of taxation. The money can be used for good things but it's often coming from people who can least afford it.

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Awesome. Let's make it easier for people to do something addictive and viciously corrosive to individual lives, families, and functional communities!

Fuck, if we need tax money, there are tons of better ways to get it. Soak rich people, soak third home owners, soak tourists, expropriate investment properties, whatever.

Hey, when I win that next big Powerball who will be laughing!? Scratchers and pop tickets haven't been paying out, so it's Powerball ticket for me now!

I think sports betting is better than lottery tickets. I'd take the bet that more middle to upper class would gamble via sports betting than scratch tickets or lottery tickets.

I'm sure the majority will still be lower income people though, which isn't a demographic should be taxing heavier.

More importantly, where's it going to go

Just taking as much time as possible to let people open dispensaries, which can be a taxation goldmine.

Lol it's funny how little "freedom" there actually was through the 20th century.

I'm far from libertarian, but we really need to trust that people can handle their lives. Legalize drugs next.

All of the real money will go from poor people in VT to a crime syndicate in Nevada.

Lotteries aren't ran for profit by private out of state companies.

It's so annoying that they'd rather people suffer from gambling addiction, losing wages, over just raising the minimum wage in the state.

Wouldn't it be better for our economy if people who lived & worked here year round had more money to spend? ...

Live in NH now and bet all the time online via DraftKings. DraftKings has the exclusive rights to provide sports gaming in the state. You just visit a casino that hosts sports gaming (I did it through The Brook in Seabrook) and show them your license and then you can do it on your phone/computer as long as you're in the state. Learned that last item when I was visiting my folks in VT and tried to make a bet.

When I lived and worked in Vermont, I had a bookie that would meet me at (not going to name the place but it was in downtown Burlington) every week or so. His vig was high (don't blame him, of course), so I'm happy to do it through DK now.

You're not going to stop sports gambling, sorry, you're just not. Why not profit off it?

Republicans are a cancer.

Booze is addictive and viciously corrosive etc etc. You want to make that illegal too?

About fucking time

Why is online poker not happening in vt? Sports betting is an order of magnitude more destructive than poker and it’s still illegal here. Lame.

100% this. It would be nice if at least some of the tax revenue from this would go toward combatting the opioid crisis (I know it won’t/wouldn’t just trying to be optimistic).

Great tax revenue. Get your tax money from low-income gambling addicts instead of having the wealthy pay their fair share.

Unfortunately it’s a poor tax for people that misunderstand odds. When the prize gets large like the recent $1b prize, it’s due to the odds of winning decreasing overall.

The odds are the same for powerball no matter how large the prize is. It is the same game you play.

Who owns DraftKings?

Right right, the jackpot odds are 1:292,000,000. It was 1:175 million when we saw the ‘peaks’ of 300-400 million.

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There are so many things that you can point to and say, "that is dangerous to a subset of the population, so we should ban it for the rest."

A few things that are pretty clear for non-complex manufacturing items: prohibition does not work, and promoting abstinence does not work.

Trying to abolish something that can be as easily done as sports betting, just causes it to go underground. Those who are addicted will have no protections, they will be able to gamble more than they have, and they will be owing money to potentially dangerous individuals. In a legalized system, you at the very least have to transfer funds in, and that is a very helpful barrier.

Legalize it, educate the public, and treat those with addiction.

I think I understand what your comment meant.

So you don't think Vermont will collect any tax on those bets?

At least sports betting you have a chance to win. Lottery tickets are literally just poor and middle class people setting their money on fire.

Draftkings is publicly traded.

Sports betting is a great way to turn $100 into $200 into $65 into $180 into $640 into $50 into $0.

I’d love to bet on sports. Make a few bucks while watching something I love. Sounds awesome

Not quite what I'm asking, but that's certainly an answer. Let me try again: when you put money into DraftKings, where does it go? Looks like the CEO is a billionaire in Boston. Since one of the main objections in this post is that gambling drains money from a poor state and sticks it in rich people's pockets, it seems like "just bring in DK" isn't a great counter-argument.

Just like I'd rather have a shady weed dealer than a corporate dispensary run by some asshole pharma executive, I'd rather have the bookie in Burlington than the online monopoly run out of Boston.

Instead of changing the subject, why don't you put your thinking cap on and try to figure out my very simple statement.

Exactly. But at least you had the opportunity to make money and cash out. Versus taking 20 dollars a week for your whole life and throwing it straight in the trash.

Yeah, your declarative statement that didn't actually say anything.

It also isn't changing the subject, the subject was taxes. My question was about taxes. I'm assuming you're not able to answer because you don't know how many of those taxes work.

Why don't you put your thinking cap on and try to answer my very simple question?

And lottery players can stop anytime too. The "chance" to cash out isn't something that actually happens, that's why betting agencies can always cover it's costs, people don't cash out.

Sure legalize it. Just make sure everyone who is gambling gives their social security number to the state so when they get addicted and go bankrupt the state doesn’t have to pay all their social services. This whole crap about increased revenue doesn’t factor in the increased costs to the state.

They make money because more often than not they're right. I'll take 40 percent odds over 0.00000001 percent odds but what do I know about math. You can't compare the two. Sure any kind of betting has risks.

Poor attempt at pseudo-intellectualism.

Since you're a moron, of course there will be some taxes collected. Just like how there are taxes collected on everything. That most money will go to the for-profit gambling company out of state means that the state of Vermont will have a net negative cashflow by legalizing online sports betting. Since there's barely more than a half million people here and most of them are absurdly poor, it is not a good situation that what little money is here will be taken away. If you really want more tax money, you could make a very minor adjustment to already-extant taxes which would be less negatively impactful to the state than turning a lot of poor people into online gambling addict degenerates.

>Poor attempt at pseudo-intellectualism.

Thank you putting the tl:dr of your comment at the beginning.

Oh, don't get me wrong, if betting came to VT, I'd probably throw some money into it every now and then. I also buy a powerball ticket with it's a billion dollars, but with a bet, I also don't expect to see that money. It's just petty cash that if win/lose, it doesn't matter.

The issue I see with betting is the people who will keep it in business, the same asottery tickets. The, "I just haven't caught the break yet" folks.

I'd like to see sports betting in VT, but I also see it as something that isn't "good".

Friggin epic. Bacon epic meme

fuck sports betting, can we get some poker tables in here?

No, but I feel like theres a lot more resources for alcoholics than for people with a gambling addiction. Neither of the things should be illegal, but they should be regulated to minimize harm to the public and the individual.

I'm still waiting for the magic mushrooms.

Sounds good to me.

Bernie can use his humble little summer camp's guest house to open a sports gambling hall. He can use all of the proceeds to build houses (instead of pods) for the homeless

Yes, because prohibition worked out so well for us....

Legalize sports betting and criminalize ads for sports betting. If I never hear the name of another sports betting site or app it will be too soon.

>Just make sure everyone who is gambling gives their social security number to the state so when they get addicted and go bankrupt the state doesn’t have to pay all their social services.

Uhhhh what?

Woah woah woah, why can't I bet it all on the Pats winning the Super Bowl and then have the state bail me out? That sounds like I can't lose!

That's why I call the lottery the poor tax whenever someone blabs about the current jackpot. I only buy scratch tickets and rarely because they don't pay anything anymore. I do get annoyed by idiots holding up lines so they can pay the poor tax.

The odds don’t change regardless of how big the jackpot?

Supermajority. What?

So your against safe injection sites?

Addressing the opiate crisis wasnt even on Kronoskis top agenda items for the coming vetoproof legislative session.

I think the implication is more tickets means more possible winners, smaller total prize, lower odds of collecting the whole payout. Maybe not, maybe he just doesn’t understand math.

The statement as worded certainly implies the latter.

My bad joining two thoughts into one. The odds of jackpot on Powerball are 1:295m(up from 175m), or so freaking low that I’d be more likely to be bit by a shark, while being struck by lightning, on the CT river. Or maybe a better analogy is the blackjack card shoe is 9 instead of 5 decks?

That jackpot is only so large nowadays compared to earlier games is from the streak of dud tickets increasing, not because more tickets are selling overall. I believe they increased the # of balls by 10 to get that shift in odds. It’s not you vs your neighbor or the conglomerates that buy when the prize pools get high. It’s us vs spinning balls in a bin. I don’t think it matters weather their is 1 or 15 winning ticket holders, it’s the ones that came up that drawing.

Now you do have a 1:25 odds of getting a $4 winner though. $50 to guarantee $4? I’d rather buy a candy or glizzy from the gas station rollers for the guaranteed value of lunch.

Maybe it’s still a crummy explanation of why the lotto, and specifically pick-x games, are a poor tax.

why is someone elses inability to control themselves my problem? if you dont want to participate, dont participate.

That would be fine with me, but it's a moot point since the cat's a few light years out of the bag. Gambling is something we still have a choice about. Is it something people should do? Is it something the state government should make easier?

No, I'm not. I think all drugs should be legal to use, but doing so should be shameful, and to the extent possible, humiliating. The sites in Europe where you have to shoot up in a structure with transparent walls are a start, but we should go much farther. Drug dealers should be given the choice of the death penalty or a lifetime of hard labor. Basically the goal for drug use, particular IV drug use and opiods, should be "safe, legal, and rare".

> Trying to abolish something that can be as easily done as sports betting, just causes it to go underground. Those who are addicted will have no protections, they will be able to gamble more than they have, and they will be owing money to potentially dangerous individuals. In a legalized system, you at the very least have to transfer funds in, and that is a very helpful barrier.

This is the same argument that's currently en vogue regarding prostitution. But unsurprisingly, in the countries with legal prostitution, even rich, liberal democracies like Germany, none of the promised protections have arrived, and none of the dangerous people have gone away. Most prostitutes in German brothels are trafficked from poor countries and exploited by pimps, for example. It's tough to imagine it would be any different with gambling. Organized crime already runs the casinos.

One of the greatest tricks of the lower-case-l-liberal ruling class is lowering the bar for evaluating anything to mere consent. We're only allowed to consider if something is allowed, we're never supposed to ask if that thing is something anyone should be doing, and we're never supposed to ask if doing that thing is intrinsically harmful, whether or not anyone consented.

I’ll vote against any sports betting initiative.

Gambling is evil. And no I’m not normally against things in general.

Why do we have to stop it? Can’t we just say we don’t want to endorse it?

Alcohol prohibition is the best example, and it has decades of time to back it up. Alcohol is not "intrinsically healthy." Alcohol is similar to gambling on many terms.

There aren't many underground distilleries or alcohol smuggling operations. Using the open market for purchasing is a much better option than skirting the law. I would say that it was a success, albeit with the known negatives, but it's better than it was.

Your prostitution example is still new, it's going to take time to adjust. Are you saying that the organized crime today at casinos is just as bad as it was? I'd have to see some statistics on that.

Got it. Betting is addictive and bad for families and society, but heroin is ok 👍🏽.

Some red wave. Land doesn't vote lol

Talk to someone addicted to drugs (and those people n their lives) and see how well they're handling things.

Yeah.. do you think I just want this done for fun? Of course I'm thinking about the addicted, and the overdoses.

Drugs are illegal, and yet they are still addicted. Addiction is difficult to treat, because there are many underlying sources.

Now, to the reason for legalizing drugs: Overdoses.

Overdose isn't just a person taking too much drugs. Most recently, fentanyl laced drugs are the major driving factor for the increase in overdoses.

Now, let me ask you this, why aren't there a large portion of overdoses with pharmaceutical drugs? Regulations. The regulations in manufacturing, labels, and selling create a safe environment. That way, you can go to a pharmacy and know the prescription or OTC product is exactly what you are purchasing.

By making drugs illegal, you eliminated regulations, increased drug trafficking gangs, and created an unsafe environment.

Yes. I'm thinking about the addicted. I'm just trying to solve the problem in a way that I believe would work. Don't try to make me out like I'm some kid wanting to get high.

>It appears that the rise in deaths was fueled not by greater numbers of teens using drugs – substance use in this age group actually went down during the pandemic – but by use of dangerous and highly potent forms of fentanyl. The study found that fentanyl-related deaths increased from 253 in 2019 to 680 the following year. And in 2021, 77% of all teen overdose deaths involved fentanyl.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/12/1092309418/teen-drug-overdose-deaths-rose-sharply-in-2020-driven-by-fentanyl-laced-pills https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007807/

There once upon a time a proposal to put a Casino where the Moron Plant is. Of course that got shot down… because we needed an indoor ice climbing wall… that never happened.

This feels like a “if H Ross Perot had gotten elected” kind of hypothetical.

Through June of 2022 - at that point DraftKings had been operational for 19 months - NH raked in $44.2 million from the company.

Ummm...yeah. So there's that.

Sure, and the big pharma companies pay some taxes to the states they sell weed in, too. Or rather, they charge sales tax, so their customers are really the ones paying taxes to the state.

Still rather have the shady indie.

👀