donmcarthur.com

posted: Wed 28 Jul 2010 8:27 am

Considering that our state governments are going to be broke for the next decade at least, some will be adopting this soon enough. I also expect legalized and taxed marijuana initiatives to sweep the nation, starting on the west coast and then moving to New England:

Europe Unleashes Online Gambling to Fill Coffers

PARIS - Across Europe, cash-strapped governments looking for ways to reduce yawning budget gaps are embracing online gambling, a source of revenue they once viewed with wary skepticism.

Internet GamblingWhile U.S. opposition to Internet betting has centered on concerns about gambling addiction, European politicians previously objected for a different reason: liberalizing the practice, they feared, would undermine state-sponsored lottery monopolies and gambling operators.

But more and more gamblers are spurning land-based casinos anyway, and logging on to Internet poker and sports betting sites - many of them based in places that are out of reach of tax collectors. As public finances worsen, governments are trying to bring this once-shadowy business into the mainstream of Europe's digital economy, where it can be regulated and taxed.

"What's happened is a realization that you can't uninvent the Internet," said David Trunkfield, a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "People are gaming online. You either try to regulate and tax it, or people are going to go to the offshore operators, where you don't get any revenue."...

Source: NY Times

...the need for revenue will trump pseudo-morality. And the demand is huge—go look in your local newspaper sports section, you can find the betting line for all the sports. And marijuana is the largest cash crop in most of the southern states already...

No comments yet. Be the first.


Add a Comment

  Remember me?:


Previous Item - Return to donmcarthur.com

Top
Mail to mcarthurweb at yahoo dot com
On Freenode IRC #MySQL Channel
as threnody
DIY Blogware by Don McArthur
© 2007 - 2010 Donald W. McArthur