[chrisBob]

My theory is that legal sports betting makes the economy seem artificially worse for a lot of people. It has had a measurable impact on bankruptcy rates, and is causing a lot of self-inflicted financial stress. Trump's main platform is that your problems aren't your fault, and I think that resonates well with people struggling because they are throwing out their disposable income every month.

[jonhohle]

I’ve never bet on sports but watched my grocery bill skyrocket. A few years ago I posted year-over-year grocery prices and in aggregate the bill was 50% over the course of 12-months. Since then we’ve seen insurance and utilities skyrocket, creature comforts like streaming services are all up. CPI may say one thing, but my checkbook feels much worse. Disposable income has all gone to sustain a reduced quality of life.

[lokar]

What do you think will happen to grocery prices now?

[jonhohle]

It depends on how gov spending changes. If the federal government stops hemorrhaging debt hopefully they stay at current levels.

[nradov]

Does that really impact a lot of people? The total size of the legal sports betting industry is $11B, which is only about 0.04% of US GDP.

https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39563784/sports...

[fullstop]

I am not on Facebook, but my wife is. According to her there are countless posts from women complaining that their husbands / boyfriends are wasting their money on sports betting.

So while it's a small percentage of GDP, it is a much larger percentage of their budget.

[nradov]

I am Facebook friends with a lot of women and haven't seen a single such complaint. That's obviously not a real population survey but if it was really a widespread problem then I think I would have seen it.

[fullstop]

I'll have to ask her, but I'm pretty sure that this is in closed groups and not people posting about it on their wall.

[camdenreslink]

When looking at some profiles of celebrating Trump supporters on Reddit, basically 100% had a large number of posts in sports betting topics, or Wall Street/day trading topics. An interesting demographic overlap there.

[Der_Einzige]

Back in my day I remember when the same anti-porn conservatives would also tell you that gambling bans are good. I can't believe that conservatives gave up on moral purity.

[ConspiracyFact]

This is peak “tone-deaf coastal elite”.