Buffett at the 2007 Annual Shareholders’ Meeting:
“The desire of people to gamble ... and they gamble in stocks incidentally too ... day trading I would say very often came very close to gambling as defined … but people like to gamble … if the Super Bowl is on, better yet, if a terribly boring football game is on, but you don't have anything to do and you're sitting there with somebody else, you're probably going to enjoy the game more if you bet a few bucks on it one way or the other ... the human propensity to gamble is huge ... now when it was legalized only in Nevada, you had to go to some distance or break some laws to do any serious gambling, but as the states learned what a great source of revenue it was, they gradually made it easier and easier for people to gamble and believe me the easier it's made, the more people will gamble.
40 years ago I bought a slot machine and I put it up on our third floor and I could give my kids any allowance they wanted as long as it was in dimes, I mean I had it all back by nightfall ... I thought it would be a good lesson for them, they weren't going to Las Vegas to do it, but believe me when it was on the third floor they could find it ... my payout ratio was terrible too, but that's the kind of father I was.
But gambling, people are always going to want to do it and for that reason I particularly think that to quite an extent gambling is a tax on ignorance ... if you want to tax the ignorant, people who will do things with the odds against them, you just put it in and guys like me don't have to pay taxes, and I find that kind of socially revolting when a government preys on the weaknesses of the citizenry rather than acts to serve them....”
