Morton J. Marcus, an economist, writer, and speaker formerly with the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University
Last week I was walking on the Statehouse grounds and I saw some folks with large green pins on their lapels. "What do those stand for?" I asked.
"Small businesses need Electronic Gaming Devices" one wearer told me. "That's for bars," I commented. The reply I got was not friendly.
In the newspapers and on TV during the same week, there were features about horse breeders "needing" more state subsidies from slot machines at race tracks to "keep the industry alive."
Isn't this the lowest form of special pleading imaginable? Bar owners and horse breeders are not and should not be a protected class. Unless they claim inferior intelligence or innate inadequacies regarding their business acumen, why should they get help from the state? Do we as a state have any legitimate reason to help them? Just because they exist does not entitle them to special treatment.
What has happened to the idea of getting people off welfare? Do we want horse breeders dependent on the state or should they make it on their own. Do bar owners need help from us? We already protect them from open competition.
If more gaming devices are warranted to raise revenue, then let's install them to benefit worthy causes. Instead of supporting more gaming devices to keep horse breeders in business and to raise the revenues of bar owners, let's use the funds to educate displaced workers in our state. We can subsidize child care for needy families. We could fund health care or housing. We could do any of a hundred things we are not doing because "we don't have the money."
I don't like gambling because it redistributes wealth by chance. I have argued, without success, that the rewards in life should be based on merit. That, it seems to me, is at the heart of American economic ideology. When we have raffles and lotteries, we tell ourselves and our children that effort, good deeds, knowledge, good manners, even good looks are not important.
To use gambling to increase the revenues of the state is unfortunate. To use it to benefit small groups of people who have no legitimate claim to special treatment by the state is plain wrong.
On another note, I am disappointed that Governor Daniels has withdrawn his support for the Commerce Connector around the eastern and southern sides of the Indianapolis metro area. I am equally distressed that he orphaned the Illiana Expressway east of I-65. These were good ideas he put forward. Now is the time to pursue them.
Today the public outcry against these initiatives is too strong for a smart politician to ignore. Soon it will be too late to advance these projects because the land will be built over and the number and intensity of the protests will be much greater.
The governor proposed what will be needed. His ideas deserved serious consideration not knee-jerk opposition. The narrow-minded occupants of these lands today showed again the human tendency to ignore the needs of the future. Rather than risk their ire, the governor stepped back.
If Mitch Daniels was a good bureaucrat, he would have appointed a "blue ribbon" council to outline the transportation needs of the state. Then he could have endorsed their proposals with less identification of his own political career with the projects themselves.
It is always sad when voters won't consider the rational programs of their leaders. And these are the same voters who follow blindly a president who is bereft of rational programs.