Gambling machines

Press, 11 October 1986, Page 18

Gambling machines

Sir,—The decision to legalise gambling machines is one more example of a Government abrogating its responsibility to govern in the interests of all its citizens. Gambling, to some people, is a drug just as lethal as any other. In Australia farms and homes were lost to the “one-armed bandits.”. There have been enough farms and homes lost already in this country through economic disaster. To legalise gambling machines so that the Government can get a rake-off of the “take” is about as cynical and wrong a decision as has yet been made. Why not legalise marijuana, too? It is quite unbelievable that a Labour Government could even contemplate such retrogressive legislation. — Yours, etc., J. SHARP. October 8, 1986.

Sir, —In your issue of October 8 you comment on economists’ faulty forecasts. “Dire” forecasts by B.E.R.L. and “favourable” forecasts by Roger Douglas proved faulty. Indeed, in the fields of finance arid interest, prices, wages, unemployment, production, foreign payments, exchange fluctuations and their interactions we drift aimlessly. In my book, “The Magic Square,” I hope to have demonstrated that an economy relying on market forces alone resembles a gambling casino. Licensing of gambling machines is significant in this context. The great Lord Keynes said: “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.” (“General Theory,” p. 159.) If economists prescribe deregulation (casinolike) and blame wage and salary earners for unemployment and other ugly consequences of uncontrolled capitalism, they cannot make accurate forecasts. You cannot predict a poker machine. — Yours, etc.,

W. ROSENBERG. October 9, 1986.