Where the Real Superbowl Action Is - It's Not on the Field

$9.07 Billion. That's a positively huge amount of money. What's it for? Well, you could buy 2 Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carriers and have enough left over for 4,250 new Cessna 172 Skyhawks, complete with Garmin GPS, to fly off of them. I don't think you could fit 2,100 Cessnas on each one, but you get the point. In any case, that's about 10% of all such aircraft produced since production began in 1955.
According to cost figures from a University of Kentucky study, you could build your own, private 67 mile long Interstate Highway. Maybe you'd like to do something a bit more charitable. You could buy 30 nice, new, 250 bed, suburban hospital facilities, and locate them in the communities of your choice. You like cars? Well, you could have one hell of a car collection with that much money. In fact you could pick up a couple of motorcycles too. That $9.07 billion would buy just about every vehicle produced by the Honda Motor Corp. for the first 3 quarters of 2007.
What are people spending so much money on? Well, betting on the Superbowl, of course. About $90.7 million was spent on legal betting on last year's Superbowl in Nevada sports books alone. By some estimates, this accounts for roughly 1% of all action seen on the game. Simple math reveals that people drop about $9.07 billion betting on the big game. Wow! How much of that is illegal gambling? The majority of it, although much of this illegal money changes hands in office pools throughout America, and is wagered by people who seldom bet on much else. Gambling has been legalized in many communities throughout the country. The benefit, or lack thereof, of such gaming is a subject for another discussion, however only Nevada has legalized sports betting.
Since Nevada's sports books raked in only $90.7 million, the remainder is illegal. I never knew there were so many crooks in this country. The FBI estimates there may be as much as (are you firmly seated?) $380 Billion bet on sports every year in this country alone. A 10% tax on that would take care of a few things, you can be sure. Cure for cancer anyone? Mars mission? Give it all away to cure poverty? Hold on, are you insane? Giving money away on a regular basis never cures poverty, it only makes people dependent, and in most cases, less likely to ever become self sufficient. Sadly, that huge amount of money would probably only swell state and federal coffers, get the government beneficiaries of such largess accustomed to sucking at yet one more teat, and eventually be frittered away, leaving precious little benefit for you and me.
Have a great weekend, and keep trying to get Debt Free.