Quote from: Nightwatchman on December 05, 2017, 05:50:09 AM

The Age, Melbourne, Australia
Nick Toscano

Australian gambling losses have hit an all-time high after punters burned through nearly $24 billion in a year, more than half of which was poured into poker machines at pubs and clubs across the country.

New government statistics reveal pokies losses grew 4.2 per cent nationally, roughly double the rate of inflation to reach $12 billion in 2015-16, while sports betting remained the fastest-growing form of gambling.

More:

http://www.theage.com.au/business/australian-gamblers-lose-a-record-24b-in-a-year-20171201-gzwr30.html

The largest WTF of this is that Australia's population counts only 24 million people... That means $1000 gambling loss per person.

According to an article published at TheWeek, Americans lose about 120 billion USD per year.
With a population of over 330 million, that accounts to about $350 gambling losses per person.

The average Dutch citizen loses only $200/year due to gambling.
Though I must say... I'm Dutch too and I don't gamble. I also don't know many people who gamble, so it's probably a small group losing a lot of money, making it look like every single person in Australia wastes a lot of money on gambling purposes.

Quite an impressive amount though... $24b could be spent so much better, like on research to agricultural development, asteroid mining technology, renewable sources of energy generation, etc!
Sad actually, if you think about it...