White Violet, you're being just as snotty and condescending as you have recently accused others of being. Your tone is patronizing and disgusting, and i see no reason to consider that you have a superior expertise or a more privileged point of view.
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contrex wrote:My auntie was a Colonel in the Salvation Army (they are dead against gambling of any sort) and I asked her why, in principle, they opposed gambling, and why they included football pools. She said they weren't opposed to the placing of all bets, only money ones, so that if I bet you a chocolate bar that Red Rover would win the 2.30 at Haydock that would be OK. This was because of the damage done to poor peoples lives by the gambling away of money that should be spent on things like child nutrition. As for the pools, she said it was an unfair system, because for one person to win the jackpot, many thousands of people had to lose to provide the money.
I consider that to have been a sensible point of view--lotteries and pools usually just function as new ways to tax or fleece the poor. The Women's Christian Temperance Union was based on the same principle--that the booze destroyed the families of the working class and the poor. In particular, they attacked taverns as pits of sin and vice, not from any holy roller frenzy, but because especially in the late 19th and early 20th century, they functioned as banks for men who were getting paid on Saturday after the half-day, and spending the rest of the day in the tavern, going home broke on the one day in the week when they had cash in their hands and "household" money available.
