MONEY FOR NOTHING; THE RISE OF GAMBLING DIMINISHES US ALL.

Byline: JONATHAN S. SHAPIRO Local View

HOW'S this for an inspirational story:

Years ago, in a sleepy little Midwestern town, an ambitious young man with nothing but a good head for figures got involved in business. Through hard work and diligence, he became a big man in town with lots of money and influence.

The man's business was the numbers business. Poor people bet that their number would come up in hope of getting a paper bag filled with cash. Critics used to call this a racket, which is the first part of another word: racketeer.

In this story, the young man's name was Don King, once the biggest numbers runner in Cleveland. He took his numbers winnings and became a national celebrity worth tens of millions earned in the wonderful world of professional boxing.

As King said after one of his many acquittals: ``Only in America.''

King may have been wrong when it came to hairstyles. But when it came to the economy, King was a visionary.

When he started out, the business of America was business.

Now it is gambling.

Riverboat casinos are choking Southern rivers like kudzu. Reservation casinos are blooming like wildflowers in Western deserts. Gaudy hotel casinos are sprouting like mushrooms from Nevada to Atlantic City. The lights of public libraries and bookstores may be going out all over America. But 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there is a casino eager to serve you.

And the numbers racket isn't run by gangsters anymore.

It's run by 37 states. And the District of Columbia.

Lotto fever was running high this past week as California's lotto prize rose to $45 million with people lining up to hand over hard-earned dollars. Hysteria is the only way to describe the nation's reaction to Powerball lottery drawings. You are more likely to be hit by lightning than winning. Yet thousands lined up to lose their money on the chance of winning almost $300 million earlier this year.

Forget alien abduction or the Kennedy assassination - the biggest conspiracy of all is the one run by state governments to steal people's money through the impossible promise of lottery winnings.

Are they putting something in the water to make people this stupid?

If a state assemblyman proposed a tax whereby the dumbest citizens were forced to hand their money over to the state, one dollar at a time, while the richest and smartest citizens got all the benefits of added state revenue without contributing a cent, the assemblyman would be booted out of office. Yet if that same assemblyman called his tax a lottery, the mouth breathers and head-scratchers among us would line up in droves.

It's not just the lottery. All kinds of gambling invades our lives. Legitimate newspapers give out point spreads on college football games. Sports radio shows are devoted to helping their listeners pick winners, presumably with bookies. Thanks to simulcasts and cable television, degenerate horse players need never be without a fix.

No place is safe. Personal computers were supposed to herald a new age of information, an enlightened time when the average citizen would have the world's body of knowledge at their fingertips. Technology advanced, but human nature stayed constant. Rather than doing academic research, most of the travelers on the information superhighway seem to be interested in more basic activities. Along with pornography, it seems that the largest and most advertised Web sites are devoted, in one way or another, to gambling.

Nor are any of us safe at work. When it comes to wasting time, the office betting pool on the Super Bowl or the NCAA men's basketball tournament has taken the place of the smoking break.

Just ask Sharon Moore. She says she was fired from her job at Warner Home Video last year because she wouldn't help her boss run the office football pool. Officials at the company say such gambling is against policy and would not comment on the suit, so perhaps a jury will have to decide.

Moore herself says she is isn't so much against gambling, according to a newspaper account, she only objected to having to participate in it. Her attorney, Gloria Allred, usually a high-principled advocate, was quoted saying: ``We're not taking a stand against football pools, but nobody should be required to participate in them as part of their job.''

As a denunciation of the wicked sport of wagering, this is pretty weak stuff, particularly from a firebrand like Allred. Running a football pool is a felony in this state, Allred noted, and Moore did not want to be forced into committing one. By the same token, Moore also didn't want to sound like a spoilsport by attacking gambling itself.

As a vice, gambling is not a sin per se. Lots of nice people do it. Gambling is not like selling drugs, running prostitutes or committing strong-armed robbery. But lots of family businesses (the Gambinos, for example) have made their miserable empires off the profits of all four.

No, gambling is a minor vice, a smaller sin. But don't kid yourself. Gambling takes its toll. Like everything else in our lives that is cheap and tawdry and easy, gambling diminishes us in a meaningful way. It makes us believe that we can get something for nothing, without deserving it or earning it.

America used to have something called a work ethic. Maybe you read about it. It went something like this:

Hard work and persistence, coupled with frugality, sound judgment and the willingness to take risks, meant that Americans could earn a living, save for their children's futures and maybe build their own business.

The system wasn't perfect, of course, but it had some benefits. A great nation was built on this ethic, a world leader, in fact. And millions of people prospered.

Now, the only part of the ethic that seems to have survived is the risk part. Lots of Americans seem more interested in taking a chance on instant millions than saving their dollars one at a time, or spending those dollars on better, more useful things. That can't be good for any of us. One day, we may even learn what Damon Runyon said so many years ago:

``One way or another, all horse players must die broke.''