Quote:
Originally Posted by youtalkfunny
Sure, Tunica's casino industry is dying now, but that's a function of all the surrounding states legalizing casinos and cutting into their market share (cutting? more like slashing and gouging!), a completely separate discussion.
I would also love to see some non-casino sponsored studies on this.
The only examples of casinos working out well seem to be scenarios where some poor area uses their geography and law to extract money from richer neighbors. (Tunica, Macau, tourist casinos that often don't allow locals to walk inside.)
It just seems like a predatory way to extract money that doesn't benefit the community compared to normal businesses that tend to grow into bigger and nicer things organically. In most casino towns I've seen, you step a few blocks away and you see instant poverty, druggies, Cash for Gold, pawnshops, scammers, crime, and little else. Most of these casinos do everything they can to not let their customers walk outside and actually spread their money around town.
As for jobs, casinos are mostly low skilled service jobs with a few well paying jobs up top. Vegas had 100 years of monopoly, billions were extracted for investors, but the city is still mostly a dump with mostly low end jobs, crime, and lousy schools, etc.
I wonder if casino money is similar to the so called "resource curse" where poor countries with huge resources almost never turn those poor countries into wealthy countries. The resource perpetuates corruption and there is no focus on investment in the future (education/skills/etc). Maybe there is a "casino curse" similar to the "resource curse."