Trends in Legal Gambling: Literature Review

Trends in Legal Gambling: Literature Review Albers and Hubl (1997) analyze how the individuals in Germany spend their money in legal gambling and what are their consumption patterns towards it by using a probit technique. They conducted a survey in Germany, using a sample of 1,586 adults to estimate for all types of commercial gambling, the separate functions of participation, and in order to provide explanatory variables about the socioeconomic characteristics like education, gender, age, income, employment and family status, occupation, home ownership, and the relevance of the highest prizes in explaining the gambler’s participation or not in the various types of gambling including Draw lotteries, lotto, soccer toto pools, TV-lotteries, casinos, gaming machines and horse-race betting. Their results show that income has positive impact and major effect on the consumption pattern of commercial games. People with a higher income will tend to spend more on gambling. However, it has been found out that income has no effect on Lotto and that the demand for Soccer Toto falls as income rises. Worthington, et al. (2003) estimate the patterns of gambling in Australia by using a regression model. So they have collected data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure that has conducted a survey on 6892 households. They examine eight kinds of gambling spending ranging from casino games to lottery tickets and analyze causal factors like family composition, gender, income, age, geographic location, ethnicity and race. They reach the conclusion that lottery pattern in Australia is highly determined by household composition, ethnicity and age. Kearney (2005) finds that domestic lottery spending is funded exclusively by a fall in non-gambling costs when analyzing multiple sources of micro-level data. The analysis considered data from the 1982 to 1998 Interview Survey files of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX). 21 states applied a national lottery during this time. The empirical analysis compares the change household expenditures among the households in states that implemented a lottery to those in states that do not. Introducing national lottery leads to an average fall of $46 (2.4%) per month in household’s non-gambling expenditures. This amount indicates that there is a fall in household expenses of $24 for each adult each month as compared to an average of the sale of lottery per month which is $18 for each lottery-state adult From the CEX Interview sample, the non-gambling expenses for the households of low income group are fell by 2.5% on average and 3.1% while the national l ottery offered instant games. Furthermore, the data prove that the level of expenses decreases considerably in households. The consumption of food eaten at home decreases by almost 2.8% and 5.8% for bills like rent and home mortgage. However, The information do not specify which lottery tickets has been purchased by which households, thus these average effects are not considered since a subsequent proportion of households are not involve in lottery gambling. Households that are engaged in lottery gambling and buy tickets of lottery will therefore experience a greater downfall in their non-gambling expenses. Lottery gambling can be considered as investment and entertainment at the same time. It is an investment as consumers are making choices over risky assets. Assuming that the entertainment and pecuniary components of the lottery gamble are separable, maximizing behavior predicts that consumer demand for lottery products should depend positively on its expected return, holding constant game characteristics. To evaluate whether this prediction holds Kearney (2005) investigates from 91 lotto games the weekly sales and characteristics data from 1992 and 1998. The study concludes that the estimated value of a gamble affects positively the level of sale, controlling for higher-order moments of the gamble and non-wealth creating characteristics. This finding is strong to alternative specifications, including controlling for unobserved product fixed effects. The data also revealed that buyers of lotto games react to creation of non-wealth creating and â€Å"entertaining† game features. These two outcomes together find out that gamblers are considered as being partially and possibly entirely rational and informed consumers. In accordance with the results, she states that gamblers derive an amusement equivalent to the cost of gambling (1-expected value) and that they are informed assessors of bets as long as they are making investments. These two outcomes together observe that gamblers are considered as being partially and possibly entirely rational and informed consumers. In accordance with the results, she states that gamblers derive an amusement equivalent to the cost of gambling (1-expected value) and that they are informed assessors of bets as long as they are making investments. Kearney (2005) analyses micro level proof on who plays the lottery from the National survey carried out in 1998 by the National Opinion Research Council (NORC) on gambling. The data disclose the following overall trends. First of all, lottery gambling extends through races, sexes, and income and education groups. Second, black respondents spend nearly twice as much on lottery tickets as do white or Hispanic respondents. The average reported expenditure among blacks is $200 per year, $476 among those who played the lottery last year. Those who have the highest average gambling expenses are the Black men. Thirdly The average dollar amount of money spend on lottery per annum is almost the same among the low, medium and high income groups which can be concluded that on average as compared to other households, the low-income ones’ spend a higher proportion of their total capital on lottery tickets. Clotfelter and Cook (1993) and Terrell (1994) make available the evidence which exist about the â€Å"gambler’s fallacy† between lottery players. â€Å"Gambler’s fallacy† means that people wrongly ascertain on the expectations of prize and their chance of winning. They believe that the first draw will adversely impact on the second draw. For example, if game has been won last year, the probability that the same game win for two consecutive years is low as the prize cannot be won twice for a short period of time. Thus, people would prefer to wait some times before playing. They collect information from the Maryland and New Jersey numbers games respectively and conclude that the sum of cash bet on a certain number clearly falls after the number is drawn and that after various months, it increasingly returns to its previous level. Grinols and Mustard (2004) analyze the link between casinos and the rate of crime by obtaining information about the level of crime in each country examined using the 7 FBI Index 1 offenses from 1977 to 1996 such as murder, robbery, burglary, larceny and aggravated assault. They analyze all the 3165 countries find in the United States and observe the opening of casinos and their impact in all these countries except Nevada. The types of casinos that they examine are tribal-owned, riverboat and land-based casinos. After analysis, they notice that after casinos have been set up in these countries, the rate of crimes has increased considerably. Their result show that after a casino has opened, the rate of crime is low and then increases considerably overtime. They estimate that where countries have opened casinos in 1996, 8% of crime rate is associated to casinos and in average adults spend at around $75 in casinos per annum. They also support the fact that boundary countries are also af fected by the level of crime rate which keeps increasing throughout the year, and propose that as compared to just relocating crime from one state to another, casinos increase aggregate crime.

How Does the Setting Enhance the Atmosphere in ‘The Strange case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’? Essay

The Gothic movement was at its highest popularity, when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The Gothic movement was about the darker side of life and man’s soul, and indeed romance, morbidity and death. In the novel this exploration of man’s darker side is taken to the extreme. Where there is the belief that there are literally two sides to a person, in the novel the two sides are split. With that duality, you also get a change in setting and this enhances the atmosphere. Advance in science and medicine influenced minds and questioned beliefs of the Victorian age. For example, does Mr Hyde ever come out in the day? This is because of the darkness in him is accentuated outside by night and shadows. He appears in gloomy surroundings in bad circumstances, and situations. For example, in the Carew murder ‘a fog rolled over the city’ which is like a carpet of gloom and horror descending before you even know what is about to happen. After its happened you get the ‘great chocolate coloured pall’ come over the city. Darkness and night have deeper connotations, apart from everyone disliking the dark. The murder of Danvers Carew was also in darkness, which represents the connection between dark, blackness and evil. There was a full moon, which is well known to emphasise eerie settings. Dark represents evil and people are scared of the dark. This is because when you’re in the dark you cant see and it’s unknown who or what is around you. Just like it is unknown what actually causes evil. Mr. Hyde himself appears physically evil in his features, because he is the polar opposite of Dr. Jekyll. The relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde coincides with night and day. As Dr. Jekyll is usually in day, in wealthy surroundings and Mr. Hyde, where he lives is a messy old house in Soho and creeps around in the night. In this house, he has a housekeeper with an ‘evil’ face, smoothed by hypocrisy’ so in fact, it appears that everything to do with him is not good. The house itself that Mr Hyde lives in is in ‘dismal quarter of Soho’. Before the book goes on to say what happened on page 27, it sets the scene. It is made out to seem like some hellish underworld, with a ‘glow of rich, lurid brown’ and even the light is weak against the darkness in the setting; ‘a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths.’ This weakness of light could also be telling you that good against the darkness and evil in the book is powerless. This is like with Dr. Jekyll ending up taken over by the badness- Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll actually likes being Mr. Hyde more than himself, because he is younger and free compared to the restraints of Victorian middle class respectability. He is younger in Mr. Hyde because his bad side has not yet been fully developed. He calls it haggard because he wants to give the impression that it’s old and tired. Then, when Mr Utterson is visiting Dr. Jekyll, it is ‘late in the afternoon’, so this could be symbolising that there is light now but soon there will be darkness, i.e. evil. I believe that when Robert Louis Stevenson was writing this book, his own life has influenced the setting, as he used to live in Edinburgh where there were two parts, the old, grimy and poor parts in the centre of the city and the rich, posh suburban houses. These opposites in setting- the rich suburbs contrasting with the dark back streets emphasises and night with day make Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll seem even further apart and yet they are the same person. This also adds to the effect of mystery in the plot, like at the beginning not knowing what events would occur. In night, when he appears for example, ‘he lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night’. Then he has a nightmare, which is a sign that bad things are to come and the dark symbolises that also. Robert Louis Stevenson himself had bad dreams and nightmares in his childhood, perhaps this relates to the man in the story. The mental landscape of the writer reflects in this book. His nightmares, the people in the Victorian age who lead a dual life. For example, when he was younger, him and his friend Charles Baxter would go out and pretend to be lower class and go to taverns. They would lead a dual life, just like that of Jekyll and Hyde, except they could in the end control whether they become that person or not. To conclude, duality runs throughout the whole of this book, with day/night, good/bad, Jekyll/Hyde, wealthy suburbs/grimy back streets, respectability (boring)/freedom (exciting). I think that his life experiences and feelings play a large part in the story and it’s inner meanings. In this book you can see that the setting relates greatly to the plot and Jekyll and Hyde. I think Jekyll and Hyde could relate to people in modern day society, because most people put on an act and don’t portray whom they really are deep down inside. Yet, when they are put in a different place and time, with different people with different behaviours and morals, they are suddenly let loose as a different person. The connection to the story with Jekyll not coming back in the end and Hyde taking over could be applied to this behaviour. Because, when someone puts on an act for such a long time, not only do the people surrounding, but also the person who is doing this, starts to believe that the person they have made out to be cannot be distinguished from the real person inside. So, overall the setting enhances the atmosphere a great deal more than you can perceive because of the underlying connotations and meanings.

County of Allegheny v. ACLU Greater Pittsburgh Chapter (1989)

Background Information This case looked at the constitutionality of two holiday displays in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One was a creche standing on the grand staircase of the Allegheny County Courthouse, a very prominent position in the courthouse and readily visible by all who entered. The creche included figures of Joseph, Mary, Jesus, animals, shepherds, and an angel bearing a huge banner with the words Gloria in Excelsis Deo! (Glory to in the Highest) emblazoned upon it. Next to it was a sign stating This Display Donated by the Holy Name Society (a Catholic organization). The other display was a block away in a building jointly owned by both the city and the county. It was an 18-foot tall Hanukkah menorah donated by a group of Lubavitcher Hasidim (an ultra-orthodox branch of Judaism). With the menorah was a 45-foot tall Christmas tree, at the base of which was a sign stating Salute to Liberty. Some local residents, supported by the ACLU, filed suit claiming that both displays violated the . A Court of Appeals agreed and ruled that both displays violated of the First Amendment because they endorsed religion. Fast Facts: County of Allegheny v. ACLU of Greater Pittsburgh Chapter Case Argued: February 22, 1989Decision Issued:  July 2, 1989Petitioner: County of AlleghenyRespondent:   American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh ChapterKey Question: Did two public-sponsored holiday displays—one a nativity scene, the other a menorah—constitute state endorsement of religion which would be in violation of the Establishment Clause  of the First Amendment?Majority Decision: Justices Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Scalia, and KennedyDissenting: Justices Rehnquist, White, Stevens, and O’ConnorRuling: The location and messaging of the display determined whether or not it was in violation of the Establishment Clause. The prominent display of the crà ¨che with wording directly in praising the birth of Jesus sent a clear message that the county supported and promoted that religion. Due to its particular physical setting, the menorah display was deemed constitutionally legitimate. Court Decision Arguments were made on February 22, 1989. On July 3, 1989, the court ruled 5 to 4 (to strike) and 6 to 3 (to uphold). This was a deeply and unusually fragmented Court Decision, but in the final analysis the Court ruled that while the creche was unconstitutional, the menorah display was not. Although in the Court used the three-part Lemon test to allow a city in Rhode Island to display a creche as part of a holiday display, the same did not hold here because the Pittsburgh display was not used in conjunction with other secular, seasonal decorations. Lynch had established what came to be called the plastic reindeer rule of secular context which the creche failed. Due to this independence along with the prominent place which the creche occupied (thus signaling government endorsement), the display was determined by Justice Blackmun in his plurality opinion to have a specific religious purpose. The fact that the creche was created by a private organization did not eliminate the apparent endorsement by the government of the display. Moreover, the placement of the display in such a prominent position emphasized the message of supporting religion.The creche scene stood on the grand staircase of a courthouse alone. The Supreme Court said: ...the creche sits on the Grand Staircase, the main and most beautiful part of the building that is the seat of county government. No viewer could reasonably think that it occupies this location without the support and approval of the government.Thus, by permitting the display of the creche in this particular physical setting, the county sends an unmistakable message that it supports and promotes the Christian praise to God that is the creches religious message... The Establishment Clause does not limit only the religious content of the governments own communications. It also prohibits the governments support and promotion of religious communications by religious organizations. Unlike the creche, however, the menorah on display was not determined to have an exclusively religious message. The menorah was placed next to a Christmas tree and a sign saluting liberty which the Court found important. Instead of endorsing any religious group, this display with the menorah recognized the holidays as part of the same winter-holiday season. Thus, the display in its entirety did not appear to endorse or disapprove of any religion, and the menorah was permitted to remain. With regards to the menorah, the Supreme Court said: ...it is not sufficiently likely that residents of Pittsburgh will perceive the combined display of the tree, the sign, and the menorah as an endorsement or disapproval ...of their individual religious choices. While an adjudication of the displays effect must taken into account the perspective of one who is neither Christian nor Jewish, as well as of those who adhere to either of these religions, ibid., the constitutionality of its effect must also be judged according to the standard of a reasonable observer. ...When measured against this standard, the menorah need not be excluded from this particular display.The Christmas tree alone in the Pittsburgh location does not endorse Christian belief; and, on the facts before us, the addition of the menorah cannot fairly be understood to result in the simultaneous endorsement of Christian and Jewish faiths. On the contrary, for purposes of the Establishment Clause, the citys overall display must be understood as conveying the citys secular recognition of different traditions for celebrating the winter-holiday season. This was a curious conclusion because the Chabad, the Hasidic sect which owned the menorah, celebrated Chanukah as a religious holiday and advocated the display of their menorah as part of their mission of proselytizing. Also, there was a clear record of lighting the menorah in religious ceremonies - but this was ignored by the Court because the ACLU failed to bring it up. It is also interesting that Blackmun went to some length to argue that the menorah should be interpreted in light of the tree rather than the other way around. No real justification is offered for this perspective, and it is interesting to wonder what the decision would have been had the menorah been larger than the tree, rather than the actual situation where the tree was the larger of the two. In a sharply worded dissent, Justice Kennedy denounced the Lemon test used to evaluate the religious displays and argued that ...any test which might invalidate longstanding traditions cannot be a proper reading of the [Establishment] Clause. In other words, tradition - even if it includes and support of sectarian religious messages - must trump evolving understandings of religious freedom. Justice OConnor, in her concurring opinion, responded: Justice Kennedy submits that the endorsement test is inconsistent with our precedents and traditions because, in his words, if it were applied without artificial exceptions for historical practice, it would invalidate many traditional practices recognizing the role of religion in our society.This criticism shortchanges both the endorsement test itself and my explanation of the reason why certain long standing government acknowledgments of religion do not, under that test, convey a message of endorsement. Practices such as legislative prayers or opening Court sessions with God save the United States and this honorable Court serve the secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions and expressing confidence in the future.These examples of ceremonial deism do not survive Establishment Clause scrutiny simply by virtue of their historical longevity alone. Historical acceptance of a practice does not in itself validate that practice under the Establishment Clause if the practice violates the values protected by that Clause, just as historical acceptance of racial or gender based discrimination does not immunize such practices from scrutiny under the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Kennedys dissent also argued that prohibiting the government from celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday is, itself, a discrimination against Christians. In response to this, Blackmun wrote in the majority opinion that: Celebrating Christmas as a religious, as opposed to a secular, holiday, necessarily entails professing, proclaiming, or believing that Jesus of Nazareth, born in a manger in Bethlehem, is the Christ, the Messiah. If the government celebrates Christmas as a religious holiday (for example, by issuing an official proclamation saying: We rejoice in the glory of Christs birth!), it means that the government really is declaring Jesus to be the Messiah, a specifically Christian belief.In contrast, confining the governments own celebration of Christmas to the holidays secular aspects does not favor the religious beliefs of non-Christians over those of Christians. Rather, it simply permits the government to acknowledge the holiday without expressing an allegiance to Christian beliefs, an allegiance that would truly favor Christians over non-Christians. To be sure, some Christians may wish to see the government proclaim its allegiance to Christianity in a religious celebration of Christmas, bu t the Constitution does not permit the gratification of that desire, which would contradict the the logic of secular liberty it is the purpose of the Establishment Clause to protect. Significance Although it seemed to do otherwise, this decision basically permitted the existence of competing religious symbols, conveying a message of accommodation of religious plurality. While a single symbol standing alone might be unconstitutional, its inclusion with other secular/seasonal decorations may offset an apparent endorsement of a religious message. As a result, communities which desire holiday decorations must now create a display that does not send the message of endorsing a particular religion to the exclusion of others. Displays must contain a variety of symbols and be inclusive of differing perspectives. Perhaps equally important for future cases, however, was the fact that the four dissenters in Allegheny County would have upheld both the creche and menorah displays under a more relaxed, deferential standard. This position has gained a great deal of ground over the years following this decision. In addition, Kennedys Orwellian position that a failure to celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday qualifies as discrimination against Christians has also become popular - it is, effectively, the logical conclusion of the accommodationist position that an absence of government support for religion is the same as government hostility towards religion. Naturally, such discrimination is only relevant when it comes to Christianity; the government fails to celebrate Ramadan as a religious holiday, but people who agree with Kennedys dissent are entirely unconcerned by that because Muslims are a minority.

Argumentative Essay Overconfident Supertramp - 1623 Words

Overconfident Supertramp. Many of today’s youth spend a great deal of time dreaming, picturing the exact moment a clock will land upon the time inscribed upon their birth certificate, eighteen years past and signaling their rite of passage into legal adulthood. At that moment, a new life erupts, a bountiful explosion of freedoms that cannot be forbidden, the right to pave their own way by their rules and no longer confined to the decree of a guardian. While these new freedoms are embraced immediately for some, delayed by others, these passions and longings of youth are shared by millions of young adults; the desire to chase a dream, place their mark upon the world or a select few, be great among many, or discover a life unsuppressed by the boundaries of traditional society. Regardless of the direction that these youth walk, freedom is now theirs to possess, as are the ramifications that go with it. We may only hope that these young adults possess the self-control to make wise decisions with their fre edoms. Today’s passionate freedom seekers are a generation of instilled confidence over self-control. Some may plunder forward, careless of the repercussions of their actions as they have the confidence to overcome any obstacle, as we observe with Chris McCandless in â€Å"Selections from Into the Wild†, by Jon Krakauer. Chris McCandless grasped his freedom, embarking on a journey into the Alaskan wilderness that he had â€Å"wanted to do since he was little† (Stuckey qtd. in Krakauer