The claw hovers over the cute little stuffed toy hamster. Descending via joy-stick control, the claw pinchers close around the hamster’s head, snatching him away from his friends, fetching him closer and closer to dangle over the chute serving as the exit that will permanently extricate him from his enclosed glass prison to enter a new world where he’ll soon be forgotten.
However, at that exact most inopportune of moments, the claws inexplicably open and the highly-prized critter rejoins his pals to the chagrin of the sweaty-palmed mom who has spent her last of several dollars in an attempt to appease her two-year-old who, in turn, is now beside himself (where one was already a handful) in expressing – loudly – his displeasure which, in turn, drowns out the joyous laughter of all the stuffed animals – or perhaps that’s the claw machine’s programmed sound mocking another loser.
Far-fetched?
Perhaps a hamster’s-hair but, to hear New Jersey state Sen. Nicholas Scutari tell it, such claw games “target young children who think they can easily snatch a big prize.” Scutari has recently introduced legislation calling for more oversight of the claw game.
Targeting adults who likewise think they can snatch a big prize is called the lottery. And like those who believe not all is as it appears with the toy version – rigged claws for example that are suspicioned to have too weak a grip in relation to the size of the prize – there are folks like Jeff Sommer, writing in the August 12, 2016 New York Times, whose skepticism of recent billion-dollar jackpots was confirmed: they’re “engineered to drain your wallet.”
“The high frequency of enormous jackpots results from skillful planning, says Salil Mehta, an independent statistician. ‘This was deliberate,’ Mr. Mehta says. ‘The jackpots are growing very rapidly, and at a certain point when the jackpot rises into the hundreds of millions of dollars, there is a buzz, and people start betting much more.’”
Who are these people buying tickets of state-run lotteries, 96 percent of which tickets results in having “simply kissed (their) money goodbye”?
Two-year-olds turned twenty-somethings evidently.
“Perhaps as many as 50 million are swallowing net losses that average $1,000 a year,” estimates Sommer.
That’s sobering. Or should be.
“That’s a lot of money for a lot of people,” observes Sommer, “and over a lifetime it could make the difference between a comfortable retirement and utter penury.”
It should go without saying but Cameron Huddleston says it anyway: “If you’re trying to spend less so you can save more, there might be some obvious mistakes you’re making with your money. For example, you’re likely losing a lot more than you’re making if you’re gambling at the casino every week.”
Well, duh.
To counteract and cut the losses, there’s “the scientific way to win in Vegas” which cautions against the “three mistakes people make at casinos.”
Whatever is advocated to win, really the big three mistakes people make at casinos in order not to lose should be: entering, staying, and spending, especially forking over money at the craps table that might have gone toward food for the kitchen table, or for that matter rent or milk or diaper money.
From claw machines catering to two-year-olds, to mega-million – even billion – dollar jackpots clawing at the wallets and purses of the parents of two-year-olds, businesses and especially governments small and large are complicit. The “do no harm to (their) citizens” banner flying above city hall is really so much blather given government’s appearance as “promoting and benefiting from activities that are surely harming the life prospects of many people.”
Photo credit: “How to beat the claw machine.”
Uh-oh.
The City of Fife is fearful of being unable to fund infrastructure for failing to fork over the numbers reflecting the frequency with which the city delivered services to the tribes’ nearby Emerald Queen Casino.
In just today’s Tacoma News Tribune, August 21, 2016, the bulk of $1.2 million that Fife had expected from the casino operatives, may not be dealt.
Tacoma, on the other hand, got dealt theirs. “Five-hundred sixty-five Tacoma Fire Department calls to the Emerald Queen Casino billed at $1,076.63 per call, 120 cases that went through the city prosecutor’s office, and miscellaneous jail fees for the Police Department of about $21,000.”
Ditto Pierce County: $550,000 for jail and related.
That’s $1.3 million doled out to the two municipalities (sans Fife) to deal (pun intended) with whatever’s going on over at the casino other than gambling.
So perhaps the late-Norm Maleng, one-time King County Prosecuting Attorney, was right when he said, “There is a direct link between problem gambling and domestic violence, child neglect, substance abuse, personal bankruptcy and crime.”
In 2004 Fife “signed an agreement after the tribe bought Fife’s largest hotel, the Executive Inn, removed it from the tax rolls and converted it to a tribal casino and hotel.”
Now this. The city had depended on that money. The city thought it had a deal.
“For more than a decade, the city of Fife has counted on Puyallup Tribe money to help balance the city’s budget.”
Pity the city when its nitty-gritty is the down-and-dirty ditty: ‘We need gambling to pay the bills.’
Fife might want to borrow a page from the City of Lakewood’s playbook: “Revenues from the city gambling tax are required to be used primarily for the purpose of gambling enforcement. Case law has clarified ‘primarily’ means ‘first to be used’ for gambling law enforcement purposes to the extent necessary for the city. The remaining funds may be used for any general government purpose.”
Translation: Fife, by law, need not have to itemize the number of times sirens sounded, guns were drawn, heart-attack victims treated (possibly from having lost too much or drunk too much) at the casino necessitating calls for cops. Simply do, like Lakewood does: first use gambling dollars to jail unruly gamblers, etc., and then use gambling revenues – even the bulk of gambling revenues – to buy jet skis, or build sidewalks, or fund ‘essential’ services, or whatever.
Just keep your fingers crossed that your citizens keep gambling because, hey, the services government provides depends upon it.