Wednesday, December 16, 1998

The lesson that is not being taught

By Bob Greene

DETROIT — The casinos are coming — three of them, according to current plans — and the money and jobs they will almost certainly bring to Detroit is the cause for great excitement. According to one estimate, the casinos will generate annual revenues of $1.2 billion.

The casinos — and the growing national acceptance of gambling they represent — will not be especially big news outside of Detroit once they open their doors. What once seemed unthinkable — government-sanctioned gambling as an accepted part of American life — has so effortlessly worked its way into the mainstream culture that the existence of casinos in a town (or on an adjacent river) prompts hardly any surprise these days. Combine that with the state lotteries that are now inescapable, and the shift of legalized gambling into the American Way seems just about complete.

All of this has been commented upon before; the growth of the casino industry and of the legal lotteries has been well documented. Last summer, when 13 Ohio factory workers shared a Powerball ticket worth $295.7 million, all of the attention was focused on the amount of the prize — not on the fact that state governments were willingly, even enthusiastically, promoting this kind of gambling.

After the Powerball story broke, I heard from a Michigan resident named Doug Keyes, whose view of all this was fairly direct and uncomplicated. His message was one that is not being heard enough:

“I feel we’re shortchanging the children of the world when we make gambling like the lottery a thing to do or consider. I came from a very poor family, and when I was a child, my mother started to save change and single dollar bills to save for a house ‘out of the projects.’ The apartments in the projects where we lived were built during World War II to house the poor, and by the ’50s they were a pretty sad place to live.

“She saved for 10 years as a single mother, and then finally escaped the inner city and bought a small house. This example is what I think we need to write and hear more about. Not the get-rich-quick schemes that the lotteries and casinos represent.”

He couldn’t be more correct. One of the worst parts of the casino culture is that the loudest official voices in the land — the official voices that for generations taught that gambling was bad — are now relentlessly trying to persuade Americans that gambling is good for them. Whether through implicitly endorsed promotions — advertisements paid for by state-endorsed casinos — or through explicitly endorsed promotions — the almost obscene commercials and advertisements run by state lotteries, dangling riches and a luxury-drenched, stress-free life in front of citizens, if only they’ll buy lottery tickets — the official voices are purposely advocating a terrible message.

The message is that the way to get ahead is through games of chance. Every time that message is advanced — every time people are encouraged to gamble their money — there is a lesson that is not being taught.

The untaught message is the one Doug Keyes, the man whose mother saved for the house for her children, was reminding us of: If you want something, and it’s important to you, save for it. Plan for it. Make it a goal and work toward it.

It’s such a simple lesson — but the voices that might argue for it are often unheard these days. How do you persuade people that saving their money for something is an intelligent option, when governments are doing everything they can to lure the people into gambling that money? Especially people who don’t have much money, who are least able to afford to toss it into the lotteries and casinos — how do you get the word to them that there is another way to financial security that is slower, and is harder, but that actually works?

The casino culture makes no money from people who save; the casino culture profits only from people who can be lured into throwing their money away. Why do you think most state lotteries have rules forcing their big winners to be publicly identified and photographed for publicity purposes?

To attract the next batch of suckers toward the lottery-ticket machines. While the voices offering a different message — “my mother started to save change and single dollar bills to save for a house” — are so soft and seldom heard, you’d think someone in power resented them.

Bob Greene’s column regularly runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Chicago Tribune