Damn good point. Maybe you have to be a professional gambler for this to make sense, but if you stick a few bucks into that car-sized slot machine and win a million bucks, you'll go "pro" about 2 seconds later, right? So those few greenbacks you stuffed into the machine would be your business expense, right?
But what about all those ass-crack-showing guys, ladys with way-up-there hair and flocks of white-haired grandmothers who sit in front of their staked out slot machines or video poker machines 8 hours a day, 7 days a week? Don't these hard-working, infinitely patient salt-of-the-earth folks deserve a little break for their tireless efforts to get the jackpot that will finally allow them to realize the American Dream?
Look, if I keep a log of each time I used a vehicle for business, and where I went, why, mileage, etc., I can get a tax deduction for every mile. So why can't those dedicated souls sipping on well-diluted highballs and risking repetative motion injuries simply keep track of the number of quarters, what casino, even which machine they fed?
Let's see, of course they'd have to note down all the money the machines dribbled back at them, but let's face it - the net odds are with the house, and while those frequent short paybacks keep you going, in the end most of us wind up with an empty little bucket where once shined a promising pile of silver-toned, presidentially-facetted disks. Should we get nothing for our well-intentioned effort? Nay, say I!
Like any business, the vanilla-flavored low-effort gambler is an asset to the local economy. Heck, Nevada has few taxes because of the contributions of these modern-day prospectors.
With a rented Ford instead of a mule, and camera replacing the pick-axe of yore, like their symbolic forebears (those bewhiskered, drunken, brawling, dirt-encrusted desert rats so fondly portrayed in film), these valiant, hardy individuals go forth boldly every day, not to some dusty hole to blast and dig out tons of dirt and rock to find maybe a few ounces of precious metals, but to an uncomfortable stool before noisesome contraptions with painfully blinking lights in a room decorated with Anna Nicole Smith's idea of rococco luxury. And what do they get for their figurative tons of blasted rock? Usually not even so much as those few pebbles of silver or gold the prospector hoped for.
Toiling without pause (except for the $6.95 all-you-can-eat buffet in The Cajun Lounge), these bastions of society put the food on the plates of thousands of casino workers who'd otherwise be wandering the streets or working at sandwich shops.
All I'm saying is give these poor working people some hope! Break up the dull roar of their days, so filled with the false promising plink, plink, plink of the five dollars they "won" after putting in seven. Set a bright spot into the darkness they see every time they look at the ever-shrinking amount in their wallets! Give them just a tiny bit of their due, so long worked for but hardly if ever realized.
I say tax the rich winner, yes; but spare to poor loser, who is so much more in abundance. Don't make them pay for their all-too-typically fruitless efforts! Don't yank away the brass ring they grasp for just as they reach out for it!
From the Indian gambling casinos of California to the glitz-encrusted palaces of Atlantic City, I say to you, LET FREEDOM RING!
Oh, and I'll have more of the all-you-can-eat breaded shrimp, please.
A. Biker
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