Tim Worstall

Nick Cohen: Factcheck Please

Anyone know where Nick Cohen got this number from?

Among the population as a whole, Australians spend more on ‘pokies’ –
glorified fruit machines with large jackpots for the exceptionally
fortunate – than they do on food.

That looks suspiciously like the figures that Polly used to show that gambling was 7% (or whatever it was) of the UK’s GDP. Is he using the amount wagered? Or the amount lost? What is "spent" is actually the net difference between winnings and losses. I’m pretty certain (and as ever, open to correction) that the net losses on gambling in Australia are not higher than the total food bill.

Update: From Our Man in Baghdad:

Best I could find was a government report from 1999. The net for
1997-1998 was a 10.8 billion to the loss side for Aussies themselves, a
further 500m from foreigners. $760 Aus dollars or 3% of household
disposable income was the per capita:

 
 
Volume 1, Chapter 3, Section 1 (attached)
 
Food in Australia represents 10.5% of household expenditures, and
that is only food consumed at home. For 2002, $1,315 US dollars per
person which equals 26.6bn US that Aussies spend on food at home. Which
is actually over 33bn in Aus dollars using today’s forex…….
 
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/CPIFoodAndExpenditures/Data/table97.htm

So, err, Nick, where did you get the figures from?

 

In

9 responses

  1. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    On gambling addiction, try this:
    “In 1953 the celebrated Harvard behavioural psychologist BF Skinner published a paper about the gambling habits of rats. Testing his theory of ‘operant conditioning’ he had noticed a strange compulsive tendency among his laboratory rodents.
    “When one of Skinner’s rats pressed a lever, it was given a food pellet. By experiment Skinner then established that if a pellet was delivered only on the 10th press of the lever, the rat would quickly learn to press the lever 10 times. If, however, a random element was introduced to the lever-pressing, whereby a pellet was still introduced on average one in 10 times, but sometimes delivered twice or three times in a row and sometimes not for 20 or more presses, the rat apparently became obsessed with the lever-operation itself.”
    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1984051,00.html

    Reply
  2. dearieme Avatar
    dearieme

    So, Bob, should we assume that the same thing would be true for lawyers?

    Reply
  3. Dennis Avatar
    Dennis

    Found the same claim in this article:
    “Australia pioneered the deregulation of gambling in the 1990s, filling government coffers with billions of pounds in taxes. But the country is now home to more gambling addicts per head than anywhere in the world and the average adult spends £400 a year on betting.
    At the hard edge of this epidemic are the “pokies” ­ glorified fruit machines offering instant jackpots of up to £4,000. They have become an ever-present in pubs and clubs, with Australians spending more on the pokies each year (£32bn) than they do on food.”
    It’s a slow brain day, so maybe I’m getting this wrong. But 32 billions on pokies while “the average adult spends £400 a year on betting” sounds strange.

    Reply
  4. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “So, Bob, should we assume that the same thing would be true for lawyers?”
    Could be, dearime, but I really dunno and libel laws would likely inhibit me from posting any insights I had. Have to admit that my initial thought was to wonder why Skinner hadn’t confirmed the outcome of his experiment with similar trials involving pigeons, which were, as I recall, often the other favoured participants in so many of Skinner’s experiments in the cause of advancing psychology at Harvard.
    However, my second thought was to recall several recent news items about how rats are indeed flourishing and becoming more numerous in Britain in these Blairite times.

    Reply
  5. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “….rats are indeed flourishing and becoming more numerous in Britain in these Blairite times.”
    As indeed are lawyers. Especially at Matrix Churchill…

    Reply
  6. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    “Matrix Churchill”
    I wonder how Professor Phillipe Sands QC – author of Lawless World – greets Cherie Booth QC when they pass in the corridor of their chambers and whether they ever discuss the topical political issues of the day?
    For a discussion about: Lawless World:
    http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/pdf/research/il/ILPLawlessworld.pdf
    By repute, Phillipe Sands organised this letter about the legality of the Iraq war in the Guardian on 7 March 2003, shortly before the invasion was launched:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,909275,00.html

    Reply
  7. procrustes Avatar
    procrustes

    These figures are clearly wrong.
    average weekly household expenditure on food: $140 in 2003–04
    average weekly household expenditure on “cinemas, gambling and Internet services” $29 in 2003–04
    see Australian Bureau of Statistics
    http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/72db6c90e484bddcca2571b00015ad8d!OpenDocument
    The other howler is that 10% of government revenue is from gambling. This is true of state and territory governments but ignores the Federal government (which raises two thirds of tax revenue) and local governments. So it must be 2-3% of total government revenue comes from gambling (a State matter) NOT 10%.

    Reply
  8. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Oh dear my comment seems to have got lost. Anyway I found a report which said turnover was A$113bn, or which A$72bn was ‘pokies’, so he might have meant turnover. Net losses were A$13bn. Of course the distribution needs to be taken into account, it is to some degree already as obviously those ‘losses’ aren’t losses to the country as a whole (except to the degree the pokies are foreign owned) but I suppose if it was the case that 10% were winning massively and 90% losing it would matter (although this is unlikely on fruit machines).
    Tim adds: I agree, I think he used the turnover number at best. Fortunately, Nick is currently checking his figures 🙂

    Reply
  9. Forester Avatar
    Forester

    It’s true that a lot of people down here gamble; the nags, lottery’s (one from my youth was the ‘Opera House’ lottery that helped pay for it) and the ubiquitous pokermachines.
    It’s all rigged in the government’s favour. I recall hearing somewhere that Government rules stipulate that 80% must be returned to punters so that means that your ‘investment’ is a guaranteed -20%!
    A fine way to redistribute wealth from the reckless to the straightlaced!

    Reply

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