the costs and benefits of the rise of new casinos?

Question

In america nowadays, people love to do things as a passtime, if it's playing cards or rolling dice or just eating a good meal, a casino provides all these benefits, it also provides great jobs and meeting people, and supposedly it makes money for the government so taxes can stay the same and not go up or go up as fast as they would without the casino in town, but i think the cost is the guy or gal that never had a gambling problem developing a gambling problem, gambling is an ugly monster related to bad drugs and bad sex....i really think it's a three headed monster that kills most people that are not aware of the dangers these things can do to people, i've been to atlantic city 2 years ago and saw a homeless man ranting how all the drugs, sex, gambling.....ruined his whole entire life, he's an old man now with no family and no love from others, why can't our government help those kind of people out more, cause aa and ga and sex addicts really ain't helping, a church seems ok to me

Answer 1

The problem with your argument is where do you draw the line.

America has never been a nanny state. It's every man for himself. Health care only if you can afford it. Tax breaks for the super rich. A stigma for those on welfare and food stamps. College education only if you are rich or if you sign up and join the army (or similar).

But what you are suggesting is that America becomes a nanny state. Now as a liberal, I am okay with more socially aware policies, but it's pretty clear that this is not the mainstream opinion of Americans.

The crux of your argument is that casinos help to create social problems, specifically gambling addiction. Somehow you linked it also to drugs and sex, but I'm not quite sure how you made that link.

The thing is, let's say we did close all the casinos down. You'd put millions of American out of work. The impact in the national and local economy would be massive. You'd be closing down the horse tracks, the lottery offices, the dog tracks. Thousands of businesses that are related to gambling in the customer service and supply chain would go out of business. Outlawing gambling would literally hurt millions of people.

But where do you draw the line. For every washed up gambling addict, I could probably find you a dozen alcoholics. There are an estimated 18,000,000 Americans with a drinking problem. So do we ban alcohol? Because if you check your history books, you'll see that idea didn't work out all that well the first time around. Thousands of people would be put out of work. People who produce alcohol in this country, people that sell it.

What's the next step after you ban alcohol? There's about 12,000 people a year shot and killed in this country. Far more than any other industrialized country. Should we ban guns too? Just make all those Americans that spent their hard earned money on a gun, hand it over to the government? All half billion guns that are in the public domain right now. Who's going to pay for that? What about the people that make guns, you laying them all off too?

Then there are cars. Cars kill over 45,000 Americans each year. Just imagine how safe we'd be if the speed limit was set to 30 MPH across the whole country. It's much harder to kill someone at 30 than 60. So let's have the cars electronically limited to 30MPH.

Smoking is another obvious one,.440,000 Americans die each year from smoking. So let's ban that too.

300,000 Americans die each year from obesity. Time to ban soda, high sodium food, high fat food, fast food, processed food, and anything else that is bad for you.

Nearly a million American die from heart disease each year. How about compulsory government exercise programs for the citizens?

I think you get my point. If we wanted to create a nanny state we would ban smoking, driving over 30 MPH, guns, alcohol, gambling, pain killers, high sodium foods, high fat foods, not exercising, eating fast food, etc. But first off, banning something doesn't really get rid of it, it just pushes the behavior underground. Prostitution has been illegal since the dawn of time, has prostitution vanished? No. How about illegal drug use? How's that war on drugs going?

In adult society people will do stupid things, they will make bad decisions, and they will hurt themselves and others. The government couldn't possibly ban every little thing that has the potential to hurt people in order to try and fix all of societies problems.

So therefore I suggest that your idea of banning casinos is ludicrous, would only hurt people, and would still not save people from themselves.

The concept of America is freedom, and in a free society people should be legally allowed to spend their hard earned money in a casino if that is their desire. The job of the government is to prevent minors from going in, and to ensure that the casino is run fairly and is not cheating. That's all I expect the government to do. Some people will probably die old, sad, broke and alone. But those are the choices they made themselves. I expect a few dozen people will die on our nations roads this evening because they chose not to wear a seatbelt. That was their choice and their stupidity. I have no sympathy for people that inflict an unpleasant life upon themselves through their own bad life choices. And I do not expect our government to try and create utopia on Earth.

Answer 2

Obviously there are more gambling addicts in cities with casinos than without. That means nothing. It has been shown over and over again that the benefits of casinos to communities far outweigh the negatives. Here is Las Vegas, 1/3 of the schools budget comes from taxes on casinos, as well as 1/2 of the state's entire budget. We make so much money from casinos, we don't even have state income tax.

If you're going to talk trash about casinos, at least use some statistics and pertinent data, not just information given to you by a crazy guy on the streets of AC.

Answer 3

The beauty of AA, GA etc. is that they're anonymous. And as far as addictive substances, that's nothing but an excuse to raise taxes. Casinos are for people that aren't addicted to gambling. All people need to gamble is a phone or a bookie or a computer. Or dice and a flat wall. The only reason for casinos is a easy way to collect taxes. Nope, that homeless guy didn't get ruined by casinos. And few dope fiends hang out in those places either.