If Betting Were Taxed Like Cigarettes - A Health Levy on Every Stake - Would You Still Bet?

[TaffyTipster]

Never thought about it that way.

When Conor was in therapy.

Who paid for that?

 

[DublinDegen]

irish public health system covered most of it...

so... everyone did...

 

[CoachTony_Bets]

That's the answer to the policy question right there.

Not theoretical. Actual.

Conor's therapy. Funded by taxes. Addiction created by an industry that contributed nothing to the cost.

 

[ParlayPrincess_88]

I never think about this stuff from a policy perspective.

But that's actually not fair is it.

The bookmakers made money from Conor and everyone like him.

The public paid for what came after.

 

[DublinDegen]

it's fine... i'm fine with it honestly...

that's what public health systems are for...

but yeah when you put it that way...

 

[ThePuntingProf]

The question of whether I would still bet is simple: yes, though with reduced volume at current margins, I have a genuine edge that a 10% levy would not entirely eliminate given my stake levels and selectivity, but the more interesting question the framing produces is whether I have ever honestly accounted for the external costs of my betting in any calculation I have made, the answer is no, I have tracked every penny of profit and loss for thirty years and have never included a line for what my betting has cost the health system in stress-related consultations, what it has cost in services I have used during difficult periods, what it cost Margaret in worry she absorbed without complaint, the levy would be a formal acknowledgment of costs that already exist and are already being paid, just not by me, I find that genuinely difficult to sit with.

 

[TaffyTipster]

Prof "costs that already exist and are already being paid, just not by me."

That's the sentence.

 

[SharpEddie47]

The externality made personal.

We track our own costs obsessively.

We've never tracked what we've externalized onto others.

Partners. Health systems. Friends who've absorbed the stress of being around us during bad periods.

That's a spreadsheet nobody maintains.

 

[FadeThePublic]

The levy is interesting because it tries to internalize those costs.

Make the bettor pay for what the bettor creates.

Standard economic solution to an externality.

We all said we'd still bet.

But would we bet with less resentment? Knowing the cost was going somewhere useful?