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Gambling 2 (Click to select text)
It is becoming a familiar scenario. A city or town in need of money and jobs finds itself confronting an idea that promises to bring plenty of both. This idea is bringing in legalized gambling to the community. “All of a sudden it’s like bang, legalized gambling is the biggest economic development force in almost every state in the country,” says Robert Goodman, an urban planner fom the University of Massachusetts who recently completed a two-year national study of the gambling industry. This is one of the reasons why legalized gamgling doesn’t hurt the U.S. economy; instead it improves the U.S. economy, because legalized gambling gives entertainment to citizens, brings new job oppurtunities, and lowers taxes; that is why the U.S. should legalize all gambling in all states. Gambling has been practiced by people throughout history. Anthropologists, who have found evidence of games of chance among early peoples, contend that the attitude of early humankind toward gambling derived from their general attitude toward the environment. To these people the world was a mysterious place controlled by supernatural beings whose favor or disfavor was manifested through chance situations and the outcome of such events as hunts, wars, and games of chance; instruments of divination frequently included objects used in gambling. As people gradually acquired knowledge of the nature of their environment and interpreted it in terms of cause and effect, their attitude toward gambling changed. Games of chance became pastimes, but the ancient belief that a lucky gambler was favored by the gods persisted. Among the upper classes of the peoples of antiquity, gambling was frequently associated with extravagance and licentiousness. During the Middle Ages, in times of trouble, rabbis in European Jewish communities banned dice games and other games of chance. Gambling was also proscribed by some Eastern religions, such as Confucianism, by the Koran of Islam, and by the moral codes of many Protestant denominations. Today gambling occurs in practically all nations and takes a great variety of forms. Among the most widespread practices are betting on the outcome of horse and dog races; of bull, cock, and prize fights; of wrestling matches; and of such games as baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Attempts on the part of professional gamblers to fix the outcome of such games have caused numerous scandals and provoked many representatives of organized sports to oppose professionally arranged betting on such events. Other common forms of gambling include roulette, card and dice games, and bingo. Games of this type, as well as slot machines, constitute a major industry in Nevada—especially in the cities of Las Vegas and Reno—where gambling was legalized in 1931, and in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which legalized casino gambling in 1978. In the early 1990s such gambling, with certain limitations, was legalized in South Dakota and several other states and on some Native American reservations. In 1991 gambling on Mississippi riverboats was revived in Iowa. The most famous European gambling resort, the casino of Monte Carlo, provides the principality of Monaco with much of its revenue. The lottery, a form of gambling that dates from ancient times, is used as a money-raising technique by religious groups, charities, and governments, including most states in the United States and most Canadian provinces. Gross revenue from state and local lotteries in the United States in 1990 exceeded $20 billion. Although many Native Americans regard their reservation lands as a key to the survival of Native American culture, most reservations are still underdeveloped, and their inhabitants among the poorest of the nation's poor. During the 1980s, the Reagan administration encouraged the reservations to adopt a policy of self-help and private enterprise, including promotion of legal gambling as a revenue earner. Gamling is the wagering of money or other item of value on an uncertain event that is dependent either wholly on chance, as in roulette, or partly on chance and partly on skill, as in certain card games and in sporting contests.
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