Gambling as an Addiction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Gambling as an Addiction - Essay Example 76 By some standards, including those of the present writer, it is unfortunate that many persons now without them are apt to develop gambling difficulties under legalized systems. But it is suggested that if this problem becomes particularly serious then the society might care to discover techniques to handle the situation that are a good deal more effective than those hit-and-miss, haphazard approaches now in fashion when gambling flourishes undercover. It is claimed that psychologically gambling serves as a ritualistic flirtation with an unknown fate. Gambling has been called "a kind of question addressed to destiny," and it has been maintained that the fascination of gambling is that it is "a simulation of life itself." Success at gambling is supposed to be transposed by the gambler into a general sign of favor from otherwise inscrutable gods, somewhat in the manner of, for instance, the prize fighter who traces his success to the fact that "Somebody Up There Likes Me," rather than to a fast right hand and an unusual ability to withstand punishment. It was this mental transposition, as Max Weber has shown while tracing the purported origins of capitalism, that led financially successful persons in early Calvinistic societies to credit their wealth to divine approval of their total person and thus to regard it as an indication of a future place in heaven. Gambling shows an elaborate history through the annals of civilization. Stone-Age people are known to have tossed painted pebbles and to have cast knucklebones, though it is not certain whether their attempt was to win somebody else's stone axe or to invoke magic and to facilitate prophecy. We have records from India from as early as 321 B.C. showing the existence of a governmental department that regulated gambling, with a Superintendent of Public Games who supplied dice for a fee of 5 percent of the receipts. 10 Public lotteries were common in the United States from early colonial times until the 1830's. Many institutions of higher learning, including Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, were financed by public lotteries. Reactions against State-sponsored gambling were due to numerous scandals connected with its operation as well as to a growing sense of moral outrage. (Richard McGowan, 1994). Major concern in the United States today centers about four kinds of gambling operations: (1) numbers; (2) casino-style gambling; (3) lotteries; and (4) parimutuel betting at race tracks and its extension, offtrack betting. Numbers remain illegal throughout the United States; casino gambling is legal only in the State of Nevada; lotteries have recently been started in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts; and offtrack betting was inaugurated in New York City in April 1971, in a move that has been watched with special care by other jurisdictions, particularly those and there are but few which do

Macroeconomic Theory ECON302 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Macroeconomic Theory ECON302 - Essay Example The effects of government intervention, primarily in the form of fiscal policy, works towards stabilizing the business cycle, through government spending (G) or flat rate tax (t). This helps to avert the effect of either recession or inflation. According to The Keynesian Income Model, the effect of government spending (G), is to stimulate economic activities through increasing the money available in circulation, which enhances the purchase of goods offered by businesses and thus uplifts the business cycle from recession back to boom (Salant, 69). On the other hand, the effect of a flat rate tax (t) is to reduce the rate of inflation, through the government reducing the money that is in circulation. This serves to reduce the prices charged for goods, since there is not much money circulating in the economy. The marginal propensity to import (f) is yet another factor that can play a role in correcting the imbalance on the business cycle. While there is much income within an income, an increased marginal propensity to import takes away income from the domestic economy to a different country, thus reducing the income. Alternatively, where there is low monetary circulation within an economy, a reduced propensity to import will serve to reduce e the money moved out of the economy, and thus increases the money circulating domestically (Carbaugh, 204). Question 2 The concept of short analysis refers to the economic aspect of analyzing the likely outcome of the production decisions by a firm in the near future, with the intention of explaining the likely future firm supply and its implications (Salant, 63). This analysis is pitched fundamentally on the law of diminishing marginal returns, where a firm experiences a decrease in marginal returns, on the event that variable inputs are added in larger amounts to a fixed variable (Carbaugh, 144). In this case, a short run analysis can take the form of assessing the impact of adding large amounts of variable inputs such as la bor, which can be added to a fixed variable such as capital. The effect is that the productivity of that firm will continue increasing as the quantity of labor is increased, until after a certain level of productivity, when any additional unit of labor to the fixed capital will result to corresponding reduced production units (Carbaugh, 236). The effect of expansionary fiscal and monetary policy is to increase the money that is circulating in the economy. Thus, the Impact of the expansionary monetary and fiscal policy in the SR under a closed economy is to lower the interest rates, increase the money supply and thus increase the quantity of goods and services demanded at a given price (Salant, 79). Question 3: The relationship between Balance of payments (BOP) and the foreign exchange markets There exists a relationship between the Balance of payments (BOP) and the foreign exchange markets in that; it is the foreign exchange rates that affect the prices at which a country trades its commodities (Carbaugh, 491). The Balance of payments accounts for the transactions that are made between a country and the rest of the world. The exports that a country makes to the rest of the world form the credit of the BOP, since they increase the mone