Joey Politano🏳️🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 22d NEW from me: Americans are set to lose nearly $250B gambling this year—a record high, up more than 60% since 2019—and that's before counting unofficial betting via prediction markets or crypto Can anything stop America's gambling boom? 🧵
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“Prediction markets” is such a creative euphemism for “gambling.”
COVID 2.0
Is this chart net of gambling winnings?
If you have stocks, you are also technically gambling.
If we had any brains we would tax the shit out of it, or even nationalize it. It's like hydropower but instead of water it's a sea of morons trying to give away their money. Insane not to capitalize on it.
Next growth industry: gambling addiction rehab/support
Bankruptcy, suicide.
Tough to stop it when the President and his family are pushing it and enriching themselves with it!
We are, as a population, not that smart.
Maybe the deliberate gamification of all data and in-app purchases of the last 20 years primed the pump to exploit the addiction.
Looking at the chart, I can think of one thing
Yeah, well don’t look to Australia for answers.
Can anything stop America’s gambling boom?! Can anything stop someone from falling through the air when they jump off a bridge? Can anything stop a $300-a-day heroin addiction? Can anything stop the guy who keeps picking fights with everyone in the bar?
There used to be religion.
Sounds great, what an awesome industry
No one could have predicted this addictive pastime would cause problems for Americans, a People who famously love to enjoy their recreational activities within strict moderation and limits.
If we just spent $251 billion, we could win it back!
It's amazing to me that lawmakers look at the results of psychological studies on variable rate reinforcement schedules and think to themselves: "What a great thing to unleash upon the population."
It comes from financial insecurity. I’d bet lottery tickets are also on the upswing.
and most importantly!:
We are a country full of addicts. Pick your vice.
Gambling and fascism go hand in pocket in hand. bsky.app/profile/jose...
I should have been a bookie
Make sure everyone attends math class on the day that math is taught.
I think we should make a good faith attempt at teaching the basics of probability to all high schoolers, particularly those not on the college track. They should also learn the concept of the "house percentage".
Is this part of an #EpsteinClass billionaire and #GrifterAdministration plan?
Sounds like a question for Kalshi.
With meta looking to turn Facebook into the world largest betting book… erm… prediction market ? No I’d say the gambling is going to get a lot worse and now involve entire communities and all their ‘friends’ as they rage over whether a 13 yr old threw their little league game for $$$
Betting is so unregulated & growing so fast in the US that it's creating a growing population of problem gamblers—Researchers at the New York Fed looked at millions of credit reports to show that debt delinquency jumps in states that legalized sports betting (and their neighbors)
Woke 2.0 will wreck it via an executive order stopping all advertising for gambling
The administration would spin this as gambling providers earning $250B.
All advertising for any sort of gambling should be banned. Just like tobacco ads.
I mean there just seems to be this huge path for someone to actually stand up and do a full on push for anti-corruption, anti-gambling, like lets not all be degenerates, campaign. Without churches and unions not clear how people get mobilized into a 1920s type modern temperance/sunshine law movement
Well, eventually they'll run out of money to bet...
Which is why I'm glad California voters have consistently pushed back on the attempts to legalize gambling so far.
Are these figures inflation adjusted?
The inevitable collapse of the US economy can.
They put access to one of the most devastatingly addictive habits you can have on one of the most addictive devices ever created. What did they think would happen? Get gambling off of phones. Put kiosks at arenas and casinos. Make people "work" to gamble.
Of course something can stop it: paying people what they deserve in order to live.
I don't really think the American people are becoming tangibly dumber, but this kind of thing makes me wonder.
Yeah. It’s terrible. I’m sure the stupid orange man will do something about it.
People are betting on disasters.
Treat it like smoking or drinking.
casino nation sssssssucksssssss the kids today could never imagine that 25 years ago gambling was gop sin #1a next to drugs then bill bennett got caught with his hand in the cookie jar right around the same time that native-owned casinos started raking it in & that was it casino nation was born
Write laws.
Just a question on the data: it is from BEA, which tracks gambling consumption spending, but wouldn’t some of that come back as winnings so the true loss isn’t clear
So, the Draft Kings disclaimers and cautions at the end of their TV ads aren’t working? Go figure.
Making it look super uncool. Like anti-smoking ads uncool. "I couldn't stop. I was convinced I was close to being rich. I lost everything and everyone - a good job, a nice car, decent house, beautiful wife. I tried to take my own life. Now I'm here." And then he's in a hospital. Or an overpass.
I'm afraid the only thing that could stop it is a rerun of 2008 economic conditions.
They are going broke with Trump in the Whitehouse so they probably don't care anymore 🙄
Had AI started laying bets yet?
Odds are Always with the house.
This means that per-capita gambling losses have almost doubled in the last decade. With most of it coming in the last 5 years, seemingly following a discontinuity around COVID. Perhaps COVID accelerated a shift from in-person to online gambling? Yikes. 😨
nah I'm due for some luck
A friend’s teenage son got so addicted to sports betting that she took his debit card away and put him in a gambling addiction program last year. He’s broken the habit, but blew over $2,000 beforehand. $2,000 is nothing compared to some of the horror stories she and I have read. 😩
Just shows you the power of corrupt billionaires leading their ignorant online fools to the poor house to.make a buck.
Another pandemic might stop it.
If anything can stop it… 🤣🙄🤣🙄🤣🙄🙄🙄🤣🤣🤣
Gambling is going to be the next opioid epidemic, ripping through communities, ensnaring young men (especially) in unbreakable cycles of desperation.
All these soon-to-be broke idiots are going to demand help, and I am already annoyed.
Pack the Court and ban gambling, for the good of the nation.
Is that controlled for inflation?
I'd bet you $5 that line keeps going up at least bit longer before anything changes
Gambling needs “friction”. Placing a bet should require a drive to a rural casino, a weekend in Vegas, taking cash out of an ATM… Clicking a device screen just greases the wheels too much.
Do you have an inflation-adjusted chart?
Betting has existed in Europe for decades and is largely ok. Is this more about Americans just not understanding what gambling is (a bit of fun) and instead treating it as a way to make money? Because if that is the case then, yeah, you guys should probably ban it again.
Is that net or just a running tally of discrete losses
Heat death will stop this.
Where do “gacha” style mobile games fit in here?
I had wondered with betting ads being on every corner of the internet and every billboard inside stadiums Glad they ain’t getting any of my money🙂
I won't even gamble if I'm in Vegas. Not trying to be a wet blanket, I just never understood why people put there energy there. And now it's sanctioned by the state and EVERYWHERE. For the most part it's just pissing money down a hole.
More evidence to my theory that Americans are physically incapable of not spending money
I ask myself, who has that kind of $ to burn. Then I realize that "incels" are the new DINKs.
That’s a recession indicator. The more stress, the more gambling and booze and other so-called sins.
It is my solemn wish for polymarket/kalshi and their ilk to go down.
Are sports and other prediction-market gambling sapping money from crypto?
I've lost $0 gambling over the last 20 years (dropped $100 at the tables once.... wild-child) So I feel like I've won thousands
Athletes, management, sports news reporters and media Commentators should not be promoting these gambling sites. It’s shameful.
What is the gender break down for this and also crypto? I have 3 Gen Z/millennial daughters and they don’t seem even slightly caught up in either online gambling or crypto but half the guys their age seem to be. industry seems perfectly designed to prey on male propensity for risk taking.
Good topic, but bad AI slop…
Seriously? Likely over 1% of GDP is gambling and gambling adjacent?
Hear that giant sucking sound? That's trickle up
It's almost like this was an entirely foreseeable problem that was just ignored. Depressing.
A lot of the US gambling industry is not set up betting against the house, but betting against other punters. Therefore you could write "Americans won $250 billion". It's just a transfer from unsophisticated bettors to more sophisticated ones, minus the commission and taxes.
This probably needs a prohibition amendment. A revival of the Temperance Movement would also help stop this toxic behavior.
Is this good or bad? I mean gambling is awful. But there are so many horrible things Americans spend their money on. Gambling might be one of the less worse options.
Remember when they made a big deal about online poker? And didn't they ban it at one point?
And that’s just Branden Sorsby.
Guess the app
Do a breakdown on the busiest days on gambling markets and websites. I bet it's the first of the month. That was always the busiest day at the local horse track. Welfare check day.
They’re not addicts. They’re “Thrillionaires!”
Is this metric all-time PnL?
I believe the American experience with gamblibg is going to be some version of The Bad Lieutenant. Nowhere good.
Could GLP1 help here?