We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America (www.derekthompson.org)

submitted 22 hours ago by git@hexbear.net to c/politics@hexbear.net

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[-] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 8 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Decline in material conditions probably explains a lot, and if you pull out the crosstabs it seems like what's happening is the "very" folks are shifting into the "somewhat" column (only 11% rated patriotism as "not important at all"). The wording of the question might also be weird - it asks "How important are each of the values to you personally" and then the money question is literally just "money," not "having enough money to feed my family" or "having more money than most people". Anyone worried about not having enough money is probably choosing the former interpretation.

"Hard work" also scores a whopping 94 on the very/somewhat important answers, higher than everything else (self-fulfillment is second at 91, followed by money and tolerance for others, tied at 90; it also comes in at 67 on "very important", 9 points ahead of the runner up, tolerance for others), so the conclusion that people are pivoting en masse to scams and get rich quick schemes and screwing everyone else over as central values doesn't seem to hold.

Guess I should've applied more skepticism.

[-] ThermonuclearHoxha@hexbear.net 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Yep, as the cliche popularized by Mark Twain goes:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Thank you for confirming my skepticism of the interpretation by the author you shared. I think the author is definitely to blame for the bad interpretation, and perhaps motivated by the contradiction of also still wanting to defend gambling even despite the headline.