1/5/10 Online gambling must be regulated, legalized, and taxed
Protectionism, hypocrisy, monopolies, political and moral corruption cannot continue to drive the political world. People must remind their politicians that they are entitled to individual freedom, and that free trade is better for the consumers and the economy.
In many countries things are in a huge mess because politicians and governments wrongly feel that they have rights and duties to control everything people do, including controlling your individual freedom.
Enough is enough. No more broken promises, lies, excuses, intolerance, hypocrisy, fanatical views. Voters and supporters should stand up for their fundamental rights.
These incompetents and irresponsible politicians and governments run huge deficits, and do very little, or nothing to reduce them.
The current deficits are huge and totally abnormal and should not be accepted by voters. It is fundamentally wrong to assume that it’s fine to increase the deficits, because it’s not. Many industrial countries behave like banana republics, and simply issue and print more paper to cover their huge deficits.
Sooner or later, and it will be sooner than you can imagine, voters will be forced to pay the very high price for the big mistakes these politicians and governments did. The price will be unacceptable, and will have serious economic consequences for a large number of people.
Some countries take their deficits seriously and try to reduce them. The United States prefers to have bigger debts, and print more paper, and let others (temporarily) pay for its deficits. This attitude is grave, irresponsible, and unhealthy.
It is fundamentally wrong to run huge deficits to try to cover massive inefficiencies and incompetences. It is even worse to do nothing to reduce or cover these deficits.
If politicians and governments were not so rotten, they could start doing the right things.
The first step is to stop interfering with people’s private life and freedom. Stop telling grown up adults that they are free and welcome to play in a land-based casino because the state and the government collects taxes, but they are not free to play online because the same stupid politicians and governments have personal agendas and sponsors that don’t like it.
The next step is to regulate, license and tax online gambling. In many cases the taxes collected will be greatly needed and appreciated. In other cases where the deficits are too huge, it won’t be enough, but will be a first positive step.
In both cases, it will be beneficial because it will show a change of attitude. Politicians and governments need to understand that they didn’t get elected to primarily look after their own interests. They got elected by voters that expect them to do what is best for them.
All honest surveys I have seen show that a big majority of people want online gambling to be regulated. This means licensed and taxed. The online gambling industry agrees to be regulated and taxed, as long as the tax rate is reasonable and competitive.
It’s easy to be greedy and make serious mistakes. A typical example is England. Incompetent politicians increased the tax rate for online gambling to the point that all the important operators left the country and moved to more favorable locations.
I would be very surprised if the amount of tax collected by England for online gambling even pays the salaries of the department in charge. This only confirms that many politicians and governments are out of touch with the reality. England had the real potential to be a gold mine by licensing and taxing online gambling, but they screwed it badly, and I seriously doubt that the big operators that left the country will return.
Why stay in England and pay high taxes, when there are much more favorable jurisdictions within the EU? It is simple to set up business in one of these countries and accept players from England, but without paying the high English taxes.
Let’s hope that the United States and other countries won’t make the same stupid mistake.