Rarely do I agree completely with something in Big Culture-Big Media. Atlantic. But recently they published this….
America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing:
“When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.”
In which Stephen Marche aptly analyzes the sudden explosion of mainstream legal access to all things wager, its tidal-wave-esque “ripple effects” on society tomorrow, and what it says about society today.
For those who haven’t yet figured it out, life is made up of decisions made — based upon the trade-offs involved. For many decades, our society thought gambling’s negatives outweighed the positives. But that is no longer the case.
“The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. It is also a cost that vulnerable and unlucky people suffer.
“American society has (now) accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.”
Andrew Breitbart was a great observer:
“Politics is downstream from culture.”
I believe one thing social conservatives have now learned is: If you’re fighting upstream to prevent the legalization of some abasement, it’s already over. Over the past decades, as culture degraded and lost the war, it was won.
But the degradation gambling indicates is really that of America’s institutions. Americans’ greater acceptance of — and penchant for — gambling and its risks has risen along with their distrust of America’s institutions.
Institutions take money less seriously than people. We have seen our government be seriously naive about money over the past several decades.
“Since 2008, the Fed has made quantitative easing—printing more cash—a part of its regularly scheduled programming. From December 2019, to August 20,21, the U.S. money stock grew by $5.5 trillion. This is a 35.7% increase. Now, inflation is increasing faster than ever before in 20 years. Your bank balance does not necessarily reflect what it looked like a month back. Are currency and its value now the equivalent of house money in the most expensive house on the planet? Who isn’t gambling now?”
It goes back all the way to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1933 removal of our gold standard money. This is one of the funniest and most absurd phrases you’ll ever hear:
“Backed by the Full Faith and Credit of the United States Government.”
Because the corruption goes far beyond money. It corrupts the entire system. Americans have watched decades’ worth of ever-increasing cronyism between Big Government and Big Business — to the detriment of US.
Wall Street — and government flunkies with no skills save for selling US out to the Street — grow ever richer. Main Street becomes ever less wealthy. This corruption is sadly on the decline:
“Ordinary people would not watch fixed games, just as ordinary people would not invest their money in fixed stock markets; in both cases, fairness is a prerequisite for future investment.”
The American Dream — that hard, honest work will pay off — is nigh dead and gone. It is because the American People don’t believe it. Because America’s institutional corruption has given them absolutely no reason to believe in it. If you aren’t on the rich Big inside, you are on the poor outside looking in.
Why not risk your hard-earned money on gambling? Gambling seems like the only way to actually make wealth. In a country whose institutions are actively destroying your money — and corruptly working with others to steal it.
Only problem with the article: The apparent attack it makes on bank loans for poor people.
Marche doesn’t specifically mention the utter corruption of the 2008 housing crisis, but it fits right in with the theme he’s developed.
That crisis was caused by Big Government and Big Banks colluding to steal money out of the home mortgage market by throwing trillions of dollars at poor people everyone knew couldn’t pay it back. NINJA loans aren’t you?:
“A ninja loan is a subprime mortgage loan offered to borrowers without proof of income, employment, or assets. The word ninja is a nickname for a loan product available during the subprime market of the early 2000’s. Ninja loans are another name for NINA which stands for no income, no assets….”
This was Big Banks gambling trillions of dollars — of our money — on nigh guaranteed losers, with Big Government rigging the system — so the Big Banks’ wins were guaranteed, and its losses outsourced to US.
The big banks paid astronomical fees for each bad loan they issued. Until it destroyed the home mortgage market — and with it the global economy.
At which point Big Government left US to die — and gave the Big Banks trillions of our dollars. The Big Banks used this to immediately give huge bonuses for their royally corrupting the US.
This mess should have taught us a lesson: Poor people with poor credit should not be able to borrow money. The terms of the loans should reflect the risks involved.
This is what this article ridicules bizarrely:
“…(C)redit lines with 23 percent APR….”
These rates are short-term loans. If you’re poor and out of money on Tuesday — they’ll loan you money until payday Friday.
It’s a credit line for poor people. Unlike the idiotic housing crisis loans – these have an interest rate that accurately reflects the risk of lending to poor people. It’s the marketplace — accurately reflecting the marketplace.
These loans — and the people who take them — have NOTHING AT ALL to do with our society’s descent into a gambling ethos culture.
These people aren’t borrowing this money to bet the ponies. The money is being borrowed to pay for repairs to their vehicle and to continue working.
The loans can be lifelines for those who apply. They are sometimes the only way they have of surviving.
DC Is Ensuring Only Billionaires Can Get a Loan – In the Name of ‘Helping the Little Guy’
The corrupt gambling culture that our system created is a source of much criticism.
Life-saving short-term loans to poor people aren’t any part of it. None at all.
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