Smashing slot machines is an honorable American tradition.
Many U.S. leaders have happily applied the working end of a sledge hammer to them, including iconic New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who called them “mechanical pickpockets” and their owners “chiselers.” In 1934, he organized an “expose” in Rockefeller Center, featuring 50 slot machines that the public could examine for free. He brought in professors from Columbia to explain how they worked and distributed thousands of brochures to the public entitled “You Can’t Win in the Slot Machine Racket.”
LaGuardia did not believe slot machines were wrong because they were illegal so much as he believed they were illegal because they were wrong. He hated ordinary New Yorkers getting cheated — particularly the lower-income New Yorkers who could least afford it, and particularly when politicians were profiting from the cheating.
The purpose of a slot machine hasn’t changed. It’s a device built to ensure that you lose more than you win.
But the modern slot machine is far more predatory and addictive. When you put money into one now, you are betting against a computer that has been programmed to keep you playing. Everything that happens after you press the “bet” button has been pre-established by programmers and psychologists to get you to press the button again — because the more times you press the button, the more you lose.
Today, slot machines are the face and heart of American casino gambling. In earlier times, when casinos existed only in Nevada and Atlantic City, the main action was high rollers playing table games. In the regional casinos that now dominate, the main action is middle and low rollers putting their money into slots.
More than 70% of all floor space in U.S. casinos is devoted to slots, and about three-quarters of all casino gambling revenue comes from them.
In 1978, there were virtually no legal slot machines in the U.S. outside of Nevada. Today, there are nearly a million.
Studies consistently show that from 35 to 55% of all casino gambling revenue comes from problem gamblers, who hurt themselves and others through excessive gambling. And slot machines — whose steady players are disproportionately low-wage workers, retirees, minorities and women — are designed to foster addictive behavior.
In earlier times, politicians like LaGuardia literally smashed slot machines because they take money from the poor and vulnerable and give much of the take to politicians. Today, politicians like Gov. Cuomo want the government to sponsor them for just that reason.
I’m with LaGuardia, and Andrew’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who famously said that casinos “don’t create wealth, they just redistribute it,” mainly from the have-nots to the haves.
In November, New York voters will decide whether their state will become the 24th in the nation to sponsor casino gambling as a way to raise revenue for the state. Should New York change its Constitution to create a string of commercial casinos dominated by slot machines?
To me, the choice is clear. That’s why, at noon on Oct. 15 on the Capitol Steps in Albany, New York, my colleagues and I will smash a slot machine to smithereens, in honor of LaGuardia and other New York leaders who knew that destroying them is a public service and legalizing them so the state can collect its cut is a disgrace.
Blankenhorn, the president of the Institute for American Values, is the author of New York’s Promise: Why Sponsoring Casinos is a Regressive Policy Unworthy of a Great State. Read it at americanvalues.org
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via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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