Politics & News LC thread - Vivek and John Candy were right

[LouisCyphre]

Different ISIS.

[pvn]

lol Ron Desanctus thought he could win a fight with these lawyers lol

https://twitter.com/discussingfilm/status/1823573661477196012

[goofy]

(well, this isn’t by Yglesias but it’s his site)

Online sports betting hurts consumers

In our interview, Hollenbeck said the findings left him more concerned about legal sports gambling than when he started. And the main finding driving that concern is the fact that there are meaningful small effects on legalized states as a whole, which suggests that the fraction of people impacted are affected pretty seriously.

Here’s exactly what he’s talking about:

• In states with legal gambling of any kind, average credit scores drop by 0.3% after four years. However, in states where online betting is available, average credit scores drop by 1%.

• Among states with access to online betting, the likelihood of filing for bankruptcy increases by 25-30% after three to four years.

• Collections on unpaid debts increase by about 8% in states with online betting.

• Young men in low-income counties experience higher financial distress, with higher rates of bankruptcy, more usage of consolidation and unsecured loans, and more credit card delinquencies.

The story here is clear. In states with legalized online gambling, aggregate debt loads increase, and this, in turn, drives increases in bankruptcy, decreased credit scores, and more credit card delinquencies. And some of the most financially at-risk people are the ones who are being hurt the most.

And a second paper:

In other words, gamblers weren’t replacing their weekly poker games with sports gambling, they were betting more overall. They also found that increased sports betting actually replaced investment in the stock market. Roughly, they estimate that $1 of betting reduces net investment by around $2.

Just like the authors of the first paper, Baker and his team found that low-income gamblers disproportionately saw negative effects. Households with lower savings balances spend 32% more on gambling as a share of their income than high-savings households, and households with a history of bank overdrafts spent twice as much as a share of their income as those who did not. Overall, this led to higher credit card balances and less available credit.

[commonWealth]

That’s not really surprising, though. Gambling against the house is -EV, so it almost has to have the effect of decreasing investment and increasing debt. I think those of us who play a lot of poker would have predicted the lower income demo being hit harder, which is also somewhat rational if you think about it.

I’d be curious how the affects of gambling compare to, say, alcohol or fast food. But those would be almost impossible to study.

[goofy]

It’s still worthwhile to confirm. Like for any policy you can have libs saying “it will be bad in X, Y, Z ways” and conservatives will be like “no it won’t, MAGA” and then a bunch of red states do it and in a few years you have a bunch of A/B tests between red and blue states that prove the policy was shit, and then you don’t have to speak in hypotheticals or predictions anymore.

So, now you can more accurately speak to the negative effects these companies have on society to facilitate their dumb, pointless business that transfers wealth from addicts to companies worth tens of billions of dollars.

[Surf]

I think seeing these large population based observed impacts is relevant too because otherwise people will just be like “they would have used bookies anyway”

That not to say I think we need to 100% ban online sports betting but certainly should be in the conversation along with models with more regulation.

[Coasterbrad]

Definitely some interesting and telling stats in there. I really think that gambling advertising needs to be regulated, similar to tobacco. It’s disgusting how the sportsbooks have completely invaded every area of advertising, have hour long infomercials, and are unavoidable if you want to watch sports. They also should not be allowed to limit/ban winning bettors. But start with the advertising.

[bbb7979]

A lot of people enjoy gambling. It’s not pointless, it’s entertainment. If the idea is that something should be banned because it results in an aggregate credit score drop of a whopping 1%, then it is just going to confirm narratives about liberal nanny state in the minds of a lot of voters who just want government to leave them alone.

[BriansHat]

Yeah we can’t put the sports betting genie back in the bottle. So it’s more about how do we try to reduce some of the harm caused by it. Easy answers are more restrictions on advertisement and heavier taxation of the gambling companies profits.

Bigger picture we need to look at is why does sports betting cause a higher level of societal negatives specifically with men in the US than it seems to in other countries that have even in stadium betting?

[commonWealth]

@goofy

So, now you can more accurately speak to the negative effects these companies have on society to facilitate their dumb, pointless business that transfers wealth from addicts to companies worth tens of billions of dollars.

That doesn’t mean we should make gambling illegal. Tons of things are legal that are not good for society that transfer wealth to companies worth tens of billions.

Coasterbrad and Brianshat nailed it with regulating advertising and taxing the sports betting companies hard.

[Coasterbrad]

@BriansHat

Bigger picture we need to look at is why does sports betting cause a higher level of societal negatives specifically with men in the US than it seems to in other countries that have even in stadium betting?

Maybe has something to do with higher levels of overall financial desperation in the US. If you have affordable housing, healthcare, education, etc then losing a few hundred on entertainment gambling won’t put you in a bad spot so easily.

[commonWealth]

I think that’s part of it and also a lot of poor people feel like they have no chance to get ahead by grinding it out so they might as well gamble it up.

[Surf]

@BriansHat

Bigger picture we need to look at is why does sports betting cause a higher level of societal negatives specifically with men in the US than it seems to in other countries that have even in stadium betting?

Do we know this is true that the impact worse in US? Seeing a gambling shop on every street corner in England seemed jarring

[MrWookie]

Limits on how much an account can wager?

[LouisCyphre]

DC councilmember known for pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories is...

White agreed in June to accept roughly $156,000 in kickbacks and cash payments in exchange for pressuring government agency employees to extend two companies’ contracts worth over $5 million, prosecutors said.

How stupid do you have to be to get arrested for bribery when bribery is practically legal?

[goofy]

All he needed to do was ask for a gratuity and this would have been above board.

[LouisCyphre]

Which pretty soon is even going to be tax free.

[LouisCyphre]

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez will resign from Senate after bribery convictions

[TheDuker]

Republicans ask Supreme Court to block 40K Arizona voters from presidential...

NBD just the RNC trying to disenfranchise 40K people who used a federal form to register to vote.

There’s been years of legal challenges, basically because the state registration has stricter proof-of-citizenship requirements than the federal form. I have seen the federal-only ballot, it’s weird looking and mostly blank, only federal contests (president, us rep, us senate) but no state or local contests.

This part seems particularly dubious:

The RNC argued federal rules cannot supersede “the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters.”

I thought the whole point of the supremacy clause was that state law can’t supercede federal law. SCOTUS may not share my understanding though.

[m_reed05]

SCOTUS: We have to block these people from voting until we decide this on the merits 2 years from now.