首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
On the outskirts of the city, there is a business based on an understanding of probabilities. It is a jail alai fronton, a caver
On the outskirts of the city, there is a business based on an understanding of probabilities. It is a jail alai fronton, a caver
admin
2019-08-27
71
问题
On the outskirts of the city, there is a business based on an understanding of probabilities. It is a jail alai fronton, a cavernous court where athletes play a fast game for the entertainment of gamblers and the benefit of, among others, the state treasury.
Not coincidentally, Connecticut is one of just seven states still fiercely determined not to have an income tax. Gambling taxes yielded $76.4 million last year, which is not a large slice of Connecticut’s $2.1 billion budget, but it would be missed, and is growing.
Last year Americans legally wagered $15 billion, up 8 percent cover 1976. Lotteries took in 24 percent more. Stiffening resistance to taxes is encouraging states to seek revenues from gambling, and thus to encourage gambling. There are three rationalizations for this:
State-run gambling controls illegal gambling.
Gambling is a painless way to raise revenues.
Gambling is a "victimless" recreation, and thus is a matter of moral indifference.
Actually, there is evidence that legal gambling increases the respectability of gambling, and increases public interest in gambling. This creates new gamblers, some of whom move on to illegal gambling, which generally offers better odds. And as a revenue-raising device, gambling is severely regressive.
Gamblers are drawn disproportionately from minority and poor populations that can ill-afford to gamble, that are especially susceptible to the lure of gambling, and that especially need a government that will not collaborate with gambling entrepreneurs, as in jai alai, and that will not become a gambling entrepreneur through a state lottery.
A depressing number of gamblers have no margin for economic losses and little understanding of the probability of losses.
Between 1975 and 1977 there was a 140 percent increase in spending to advertise lotteries — lotteries in which more than 99.9 percent of all players are losers. Such advertising is apt to be especially effective, and cruel, among people whose tribulations make them susceptible to dreams of sudden relief.
Grocery money is risked for such relief. Some grocers in Hartford’s poorer neighborhoods report that receipts decline during jai alai season. Aside from the injury gamblers do to their dependents, there is a more subtle but more comprehensive injury done by gambling. It is the injury done to society’s sense of elemental equities. Gambling blurs the distinction between well-earned and "ill-gotten" gains.
Gambling is debased speculation, a lust for sudden wealth that is not connected with the process of making society more productive of goods and services. Government support of gambling gives a legitimating imprimatur to the pursuit of wealth without work. "It is, " said Jefferson, "the manners and spirit of a people which preserves a republic in vigor." Jefferson believed in the virtue-instilling effects of agricultural labor. Andrew Jackson denounced the Bank of the United States as a "monster" because increased credit creation meant increased speculation. Martin Van Buren warned against "a craving desire...for sudden wealth." The early nineteenth century belief was that citizens could be distinguished by the moral worth of the way they acquired wealth; and physical labor was considered the most ennobling labor.
It is perhaps a bit late to worry about all this: the United States is a developed capitalist society of a sort Jefferson would have feared if he had been able to imagine it. But those who cherish capitalism should note that the moral weakness of capitalism derives, in part, from the belief that too much wealth is allocated in "speculative" ways, capriciously, to people who earn their bread neither by the sweat of their brows nor by wrinkling their brows for socially useful purpose.
Of course, any economy produces windfalls. As a town grows, some land values soar. And some investors (like many non-investors) regard stock trading as a form of roulette.
But state-sanctioned gambling institutionalizes windfalls, whets the public appetite for them, and encourages the delusion that they are more frequent than they really are. Thus do states simultaneously cheat and corrupt their citizens.
Why does the author use the phrase "A depressing number of gamblers" in the underlined sentence?
选项
A、Because the gamblers are depressed.
B、Because the number of gamblers is decreasing.
C、Because the number of gamblers is large.
D、Because the gamblers are debased.
答案
A
解析
本题细节定位于短语所在段的第二句话“Between 1975 and 1977 there was a 140 percent increase in spending to advertise lotteries—lotteries in which more than 99.9 percent of all players are losers.”。由此可知,从1975年到1977年,用于彩票广告的费用增加了140%;而在所有彩票购买者中,超过99.9%的人是输家。据此可以推知赌徒们很沮丧,因此选择A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/vbTO777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
Anewbiotechnologyprocedurethatcouldbecomecommerciallyavailableinaslittleastwotofouryearsis"transgenosis",whic
Anewbiotechnologyprocedurethatcouldbecomecommerciallyavailableinaslittleastwotofouryearsis"transgenosis",whic
Duringrecentyearswehaveheardmuchabout"race":howthisracedoescertainthingsandthatracebelievescertainthingsand
【T1】Whenyouareinthebusinessofsendingspacecrafttootherplanets,itisprobablywisetodoeverythingyoucantokeepyo
BeforehighschoolteacherKimberlyRughgotdowntobusinessatthestartofarecentschoolweek,shejokedwithherstudents
AtleastsincetheIndustrialRevolution,genderroleshavebeeninastateoftransition.Asaresult,culturalscriptsaboutm
TestsconductedattheUniversityofPennsylvania’sPsychologicalLaboratoryshowedthatangerisoneofthemostdifficultemot
"ItwasthebeginningofarevolutioninAmericaandtheworld,arevolutionthatsomehaveyettoacknowledgeandmanyhaveyet
尽管美国的制造业就业岗位长期流失,但由于在飞机和高科技设备等高价值的研发和生产等方面能力卓越,美国的制造业方面仍处于世界领先地位。与此同时,中国的主要产品还是低成本的服装和消费类电子产品。在产品价值方面美国的产品占世界制造业总产值的20%以上,大约是中国的
我们的生活离不开音乐。音乐的特殊之处在于它不分国界。任何一种乐器,不论是小提琴还是钢琴,都是自我娱乐的良好手段。而且,早期接触音乐有助于儿童的智力发育。小学应该提高音乐课的教学质量,使更多的孩子成为热爱音乐的人。
随机试题
分析达维多定律。
其诊断为其治法为
下列表述中属于证的是
下列各项有关危险化学品的主要危险特性的说法不正确的是()。
掺入适量的缓凝剂能使混凝土()。
SDH设备光接收机灵敏度和最小过载光功率的测试仪器有()。
童年期又称学龄初期,相当于_________阶段。
,()。
“战国七雄”指的是______。
A19thCenturyKillerDisease:TuberculosisIn1882,RobertKoch,aGermancountrydoctor,succeededinisolatingthebacill
最新回复
(
0
)