Texas casino gambling tax won't close deficit

Garry Reed, 27 May 2010 -- Texas, like every other state in the union, has a budget deficit.

A survey, according to a report on WFAA Channel 8, "shows 57 percent of people in favor of making casino gambling legal in Texas to help reduce the state's budget deficit."

Currently, most Dallas/Ft. Worth gamblers travel to Oklahoma or Louisiana to satisfy their casino gambling urges.

Quixotically, however, the same survey found that a majority of people "are against new taxes to solve that problem" of the budget deficit.

It's quixotic because apparently these people think they'll get to gamble without getting taxed.

(Libertarians would certainly agree with the sentiment but they would never bet on it.)

Of course a tax on casino gambling will be levied if casino gambling is legalized. That would be the politicians' whole point of legalizing it.

So these are likely the same people who actually think that a new tax on a newly legalized activity will lower the budget deficit.

But of course it won't.

That's because politicians have a perpetual taxing and overspending addiction that has no cure.

This cycle can be easily expressed by the following formula:

T + T2 = M
 
Where T equals the new casino gambling Taxes actually collected, T2 equals spending Twice as much as the actual Taxes collected, which inevitably leads to M, which is the desperate search for yet More things to tax.

When politicians talk about "major budget cuts" they're just being self-delusional. What they really want is yet another nip at the bottle.

It was the taxing and overspending and seeking new taxing cycle that got us to this point in the first place.

Eventually, the casino tax won't be enough to cover the next budget shortfall brought on by overspending so the tax addicts will be desperately searching for the Next Big Thing to tax.

How about human organs? It's currently illegal for people to sell their own body parts for profit. So legalize it and tax it.

And when that money runs out, how about legalizing and taxing baby-selling?

How about reinstituting the slave trade? It doesn't have to be based on race. Let's just declare all "illegal" immigrants slaves and tax their sale on the open market. Solve two "problems" at once.

As long as politicians never stop spending, budget deficits will never stop growing.