Tim Blair

If it's a choice between taxing people who are stupid enough to permit themselves to be taxed voluntarily, and taxing people who are too busy earning a living and running their business to get engaged in politics to fight off the taxes on their productivity, then I'll take the former, thanks.

The returns on Poker machines are programmed to provide 51c for every dollar put in. Though it could be worse. Las Vegas machines are regulated for 42.5c per dollar. They are a licence to print money and that is the reason there are so many of them. The idiot Costello is wrong on his figures though, We down in Australia MAKE one fifth of the world's poker machines, but we have less than 1/10th actually in use in the country. Though it is a fairly useless statistic when you think that there are only 20 million of us. We are still a nation of punters.

Actually, of all the mechanical/electronic gaming machines, video poker is the best one for a player. Like any of them will have odds in the players favor.
Regsrding the stupidty tax, that would be a tax on all those voting for the lefty promising new entitlements.
Mike

Poker machines are useful if you want to kill time and whatever portion of your stake you decide to piss away.

You could finance the entire welfare state by permitting lottery ticket purchases with food stamps.

Gambling is boring.

Oh, by all means, then let's just take advantage of the stupid people and laugh, shall we? It's one thing for people to be stupid. It's another to use their stupidity for your own profit.

Well, that's how Hollywood makes its money, right? We don't want to be vilifying the movie people...

let's just take advantage of the stupid people and laugh

Especially when it's "stupid" Kerry Packer dropping ... what was it? ... ten million at once? But as he said, it's his money and he can do with it what he wishes.

Apart from that there's a lot of us who make a profit from other people's stupidity. It's called fixing up mistakes. You know, like when you don't check where the telephone line is before you start digging up the garden and so on and so forth, etc., etc.

The Reverend Tim Costello? 'Nuff said. Although every time I see the slimy little creep mouthing his bigotry and prejudice I think what a marvellous Uriah Heep he would make. That is, if the Australian film industry (sic) could ever break free from the 'Neighbours' mentality and produce some decent drama.

INCOMING.....!!

The USA has had a long history of embarrassing 'First Brothers'. I'd rather have a Tim Costello as the PM's brother, than a Billy Carter or Roger Clinton or Neil Bush. The Rev Tim actually does some good in the world, even if his politics are completely screwed up.