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Comment by CrazyDave | Hacker News Reader

Irresponsible gambling costs the government money because we have safety nets. This applies to both institutions and individuals. The government needs to bail out banks and provide social welfare.

It's not a moral issue to me. Gambling through leveraged stocks should to be taxed more heavily to offset its cost. Something like the rate on lottery tickets.

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That's a clear straw man argument, that there exists a sequence of events between people buying stocks on margin, going bankrupt, and living off of government assistance. And this occurrence is so commonplace as to warrant a proposed punitive tax on margin trade profit? What evidence do you have that this actually happens? I think you ARE making a moral argument, namely around 'risk taking' being something that society should punish and discourage via taxation. You left the second part, the societal cost (which may be real, who knows, you only offered a hypothetical government assistance scenario) completely in the realm of speculative fancy.

Not to mention, if you really truly wanted to morally punish and discourage gambling, I seriously doubt a tax on profit would make a dent in it! Have you ever met a real gambler?

> Gambling through leveraged stocks should to be taxed more heavily to offset its cost. Something like the rate on lottery tickets.

I agree with your initial point, but I don't believe this would actually help. People who are gambling typically don't look at the expected outcome and make "rational" decisions. Therefore, taking action that just modifes the expected outcome is unlikely to have any impact on the behaviour. People will still assume/hope that they will win, and if they win just a bit less, then so be it.

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