Taking short cuts in education funding

Expanded gambling

By now, the Texas legislature should be in the midst of a special session to address education funding. If you read the occasional column or news story on the subject, you might miss that one of the governor’s answers to the problem involves expanded gambling in Texas. It doesn’t make the headlines because it is seen as a minor and harmless suggestion. That’s a strange idea. Gambling, government sponsored or not, has never been benign or beneficial to society. Texas won’t likely overturn that axiom.

I’ve lived in three states over the past 28 years. Each of them has wrestled with the promise of getting something for nothing by legalizing lotteries, casino boats, or horse tracks. In each state, we’ve had the benefit of observing the experience of states that preceded us on this path. In each case, we ignored what we could of have learned from them. The combination of perceived entertainment value and elected leaders who shill for the gambling industry is usually too much for voters to resist. As a funding solution, it never lives up to our hopes.

The specific proposal among several proposed by the special joint committee and supported by Governor Perry calls for the addition of slot machines at horse and dog tracks in Texas. It may seem like a small thing but any money raised for statewide education would be a smaller version of the cash pulled out of the budgets of struggling families. It’s the worst kind of taxation.

What may even be a worse idea, because it adds a stinger to already existing lottery games, is the proposal to remove the prohibition on using credit cards to buy lottery tickets. Ponder that for just a second. Lotteries have been rightly called “a tax on the mathematically challenged.” Add to this the problems these same folks have with credit card debt. Now they can gamble more and pay for it at usurious interest rates, or declare bankruptcy. The fact that the governor believes this might bring in more revenue sounds more threatening than promising.

There is also the predictable element of corruption that follows the gambling industry. The fairly consistent experience of states with casino-type gambling is that bribes, theft, and fraud flourish in an industry dependent on greed. A lot of money changes hands rapidly. No good or service is obtained with the money. Somebody will get rich, maybe many people, but not the gamblers and not Texas schools.

Sin taxes

A second small proposal calls for increased taxes on cigarettes and strip clubs. Maybe raising the price of a pack of cigarettes by a dollar and raising the cover charge for a strip joint will discourage some participants in these self-destructive hobbies. A part of me then wants to support these ideas. On the other hand, decreased smoking rates and strip club attendance would be counterproductive to education funding; so that can’t be Governor Perry’s thinking.

Some states, Utah for one, have already taxed “adult entertainment” businesses. They use the revenue to provide treatment for porn addicts and their victims. That seems more on point. This industry devastates lives. It is a plague on families, public health, safety, property values, and anything else that supports social stability. The most we could ever gain from increased taxes is some kind of offset for the real costs to social services and institutions.

There is also something unseemly about funding our schools with money we glean from the traffic in human misery. More pragmatically, it would skew our motives when we consider zoning and permits for the expansion of these businesses. How weird would it be for us to have a local election regarding the placement of a strip club in our community and have the advocates suggest that we should “do it for the children?” Las Vegas, which depends heavily on self-destructive behaviors to fund their city’s institutions, uses a PR campaign very much like that to tie the city’s “gaming” business to happy, educated children.

The Bottom Line

Conservative politicians have trouble understanding issues like gambling. That’s why no political party should presume on the support of God’s people. A pragmatic perspective on revenue enhancement would still reject expanded gambling in my opinion, but that bottom line mentality is what spawned it to begin with.

We need to ask ourselves if raising money by any means is justifiable. Increased tax revenue is one argument used by those who would advocate legalized, regulated use of now-forbidden drugs. Some who would never consider legalized cocaine will favor something that is only less dangerous in degree. I don’t endorse legalizing cocaine or more broadly legalized gambling. Destructive is as destructive does. The rise in corruption, personal bankruptcies, divorce, theft, and general social disintegration that follows gambling far outweighs any good motives our lawmakers may have in expanding gambling in Texas.

Taxes on destructive behavior, while placing the government in a position to discourage or at least penalize the behavior, are not reliable ways to obtain revenue. One columnist suggested that sin taxes would raise a lot of money for a little while. Predictably, cigarette use will be impacted by raising the tax by a dollar per pack. I don’t know how strip club attendance would be affected; but if we do our jobs as God’s people, those businesses will not flourish in our communities. Practically speaking, it’s a loser.

The other bottom line is: “How do we, then, fund schools?” The answer is that I don’t know. There are a hundred ideas out there that should not be considered, though. Closing all the state parks would raise a lot of money but most of us don’t favor that. The same is true of legally selling influence to the highest bidder, another lucrative bad idea. Rejecting bad ideas does not obligate me to come up with the right answer, though. Smart people are working on that (as well as a few not-so-smart ones, I’m guessing). They should work harder rather than taking short cuts like introducing slots and gambling on credit to Texas.

It’s better, I think, to leave the problem partially unsolved than to worsen so many other parts of our lives. If we are forced to choose, an undereducated society is better than a morally corrupt one.