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 Post subject: The Harm That Casinos Do
PostPosted: 09/24/13 10:50 pm • # 1 

Interesting article.




Image CNN Opinion - Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The harm that casinos do

By David Frum, CNN Contributor

Image
David Frum says casinos prey on the Americans who can least afford to lose money.


Editor's note: David Frum, a CNN contributor, is a contributing editor at The Daily Beast. He is the author of eight books, including a new novel, "Patriots," and a post-election e-book, "Why Romney Lost." Frum was a special assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002.

(CNN) -- What harm does it do?

That's the challenge the casino industry puts to its critics. A new report by the Institute for American Values presents the answer.

Until the late 1980s, casino gambling was illegal almost everywhere in the country. Today, casinos are allowed in 23 states. These newly authorized casinos are not Las Vegas-style grand hotels. Their customers come from nearby. They don't stay overnight. They don't watch a show or eat in a fine restaurant. Perhaps most surprisingly: they don't play cards.

Modern casino gambling is computer gambling. The typical casino gambler sits at a computer screen, enters a credit card and enters a digital environment carefully constructed to keep them playing until all their available money has been extracted.

Small "wins" are administered at the most psychologically effective intervals, but the math is remorseless: the longer you play, the more you lose. The industry as a whole targets precisely those who can least afford to lose and earns most of its living from people for whom gambling has become an addiction. The IAV report cites a Canadian study that finds that the 75% of casino customers who play only occasionally provide only 4% of casino revenues. It's the problem gambler who keeps the casino in business.

Slot machine payouts vary state by state. Some states set a required minimum: 83% in Arkansas, for example. Others leave that decision up to the casino, as in Georgia and California. Some states require casinos to disclose their payouts. In others, that information is kept confidential. Based on what is published, however, it's a fair generalization that a player can expect to lose 10% to 15% of his or her stake at every session. The cheaper the game, the lower the payout: slots that charge $5 per round pay better than slots that charge a penny.

When New Jersey allowed casinos into Atlantic City back in 1977, casino advocates promised that gambling would revive the town's fading economy. The casinos did create jobs as promised. But merchants who expected foot traffic to return to the city's main street, Atlantic Avenue, were sorely disappointed. The money that comes to the casinos, stays in the casinos. Liquor stores and cash-for-gold outlets now line the city's once-premier retail strip.

The impact of casinos on local property values is "unambiguously" negative, according to the National Association of Realtors. Casinos do not revive local economies. They act as parasites upon them. Communities located within 10 miles of a casino exhibit double the rate of problem gambling. Unsurprisingly, such communities also suffer higher rates of home foreclosure and other forms of economic distress and domestic violence.

The Institute for American Values is sometimes described as a socially conservative group, but with important caveats. Its president, David Blankenhorn, has publicly endorsed same-sex marriage, and its board of directors is chaired by Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton. The IAV is as worried that casinos aggravate income inequality as by their negative impact on family stability.

Before the spread of casino gambling, the IAV comments, the typical gambler was more affluent than average: it cost money to travel to Las Vegas. That's no longer true. Low-income workers and retirees provide the bulk of the customers for the modern casino industry. And because that industry becomes an important source of government revenue, the decision to allow casino gambling is a decision to shift the cost of government from the richer to the poorer, and, within the poor, to a subset of vulnerable people with addiction problems.

From the IAV study:

"Modern slot machines are highly addictive because they get into people's heads as well as their wallets. They engineer the psychological experience of being in the 'zone' - a trance-like state that numbs feeling and blots out time/space. For some heavy players, the goals is not winning money. It's staying in the zone. To maintain this intensely desirable state, players prolong their time on the machine until they run out of money - a phenomenon that people in the industry call 'playing to extinction.'"

How heavily does gambling weigh upon the poor, the elderly, the less educated, and the psychologically vulnerable? It's difficult to answer exactly, because U.S. governments have shirked the job of studying the effects of gambling. Most research on the public health effects of gambling in the United States is funded by the industry itself, with a careful eye to exonerating itself from blame. To obtain independent results, the Institute for American Values was obliged, ironically, to rely on studies funded by governments in Britain and Canada.

But here's what we can conclude, in the words of the Institute:

"[S]tate-sponsored casino gambling ... parallels the separate and unequal life patterns in education, marriage, work, and play that increasingly divide America into haves and have-nots. Those in the upper ranks of the income distribution rarely, if ever, make it a weekly habit to gamble at the local casino. Those in the lower ranks of the income distribution often do. Those in the upper ranks rarely, if ever, contribute a large share of their income to the state's take of casino revenues. Those in the lower ranks do."

Is this really OK? Are Americans content to allow the growth of an industry that consciously exploits the predictable weakness of the most vulnerable people? 27 states still say "no." If yours is one such state, fight to keep it that way. If not, it's never too late to find a better way. Read the full Institute for American Values study for yourself and see how much is, quite literally, at sake.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 1:39 pm • # 2 
I don't know what to think of this study. It comes from a conservative think tank. I go to casinos weekly. They give me cruises and trips to Lake Tahoe. I get tickets to most of the casino shows. I eat in nice restaurants. I play cards and think slots are very boring.

AC was fading when casino gambling was legalized. It brought 33K jobs to the area. Atlantic City itself has a chronic poverty and unemployment problem. Drugs and gangs play a major role in that problem. It's a social and societal issue. Most casino employees do not live in AC itself.

Do casinos prey on the elderly and working class? Elderly come on buses and spend money. However, weekend nights are party people of all ages and while they complain about less gambling revenue I KNOW the casinos are making a lot more party revenue than in 1976. The rooms are packed and so are the clubs.

The shopping outlets are nice. Miss America is back which supposedly generated $40M for the city. I don't know how they calculated that, but the city was hopping.

I think casino gambling can be bad. Some local business owners have gambled away everything. You can do that on sports betting and lottery tickets, too.

Not noticing any increased domestic violence or home foreclosure. I am thinking that is a made-up correlation.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 2:13 pm • # 3 
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I'm no expert but I should think that casinos are a danger to those who are prone to addictions rather than to the general population.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 4:31 pm • # 4 

I really don't know enough about the situation to have an opinion one way or the other. But I can tell you a personal story.

20+ years ago I had a friend. We eventually lost touch with each other. After the Internet was invented, I found him on Facebook. We chatted online and I lrearned that he found himself a lover (they're gay) and he had moved to France and lived there for 15 years. After 15 years they broke up.

My friend, now in his 40s, had nowhere to go except to go live with his parents, who live in Las Vegas. My friend got a job in Las Vegas working as a security guard in one of the big hotels.

When I went to Las Vegas in July, I met up with him. Over brunch, I jokingly (but also seriously) asked how he could live in Las Vegas and resist the temptation to gamble all his money away.

He then confided that he can't resist the temptation. He has a gambling problem and he "wastes" all his money on the slot machines.

I didn't really know what to say. The only thing I could think of was to suggest he try to move away from Las Vegas, perhaps back to California.

He agreed, but explained that it's not that easy when you have nowhere to go and no job lined up.

Keep in mind, though, that even California has casinos now on the Indian reservations.


Last edited by SciFiGuy on 09/26/13 11:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: 09/25/13 4:44 pm • # 5 
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By definition (addiction) we should also close all liquor stores and stop sales elsewhere so that people aren't "tempted".

The problem is with the individual, not the source. My ex was a gambling addict who would bet on a sunrise. He managed to find ways to gamble in Alabama, where it is all illegal. The same mindset is trotted out when they try to legalize it there. "It will cause people to become addicted". Nope, it won't. If people have addictive personalities, chances are they have found an addiction, be it shopping, porn, food, drugs or whatever. ;)


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 5:02 pm • # 6 
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it's definitely a grey area. Do we have grounds to close down casinos when we allow tobacco production and sales? it's directly marketed to young people, and produced to create addiction.

i'm not a gambler. i'm too cheap. I don't even buy lottery tickets. none of it has any appeal to me, and there aren't many places I would least rather go to than vegas--so maybe its easy for me to say down with casinos. but yeah, the poor tax element of the industry bothers me.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 5:43 pm • # 7 
I don't think we have grounds to close casino. They are legal. Free market capitalism and all that. If you don't like them; don't go.

People can be addicted to anything. I know the elderly can get addicted to making purchases from QVC and HSN. After my brother in law's stepdad died they went to the attic and it was filled with stuff he purchased (and never used or needed) without leaving his armchair.

I don't really believe there is a poor tax element, btw. They don't market to the poor. They give the trips and cruises to people like me not the seniors spending 100 in a slot.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 6:07 pm • # 8 
The problem isn't with the people who have money to lose. The problem is with the people who don't have money to lose and gamble anyway. Could the casinos do something to make sure the people gambling aren't hurting themselves? Probably, but it's not their job. Their job is to get rich themselves. I certainly don't blame people who wish they could play too and get trips and stuff. They expect the world to be fair and it just isn't.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 6:44 pm • # 9 
I don't know how Jeanne.

In the world of free will, people are allowed to gamble if they want to; just like they are allowed to buy alcohol which in many cases is hurting them and cigarettes which in all cases is hurting them.

There are Bet With Your Head Not Over It promotions and you can sign up for a self exclusion program.

The program was established in 2001 to allow people with a gambling problem to voluntarily exclude themselves from gambling in all Atlantic City casinos. For more information, you can download a brochure on the program.

http://www.state.nj.us/casinos/probgamb/selfex.html


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 7:05 pm • # 10 
As with many addictions, the addicts don't always realize they have a problem. Telling them they can opt out of losing all their money just won't work. They just know they will hit it big wth just one more bet.

Kathy, the casinos could do things to help but it would involve people being willing to let them check finances and only allow in people like you who can afford it even if they lose. It will never happen. Plus casinos don't care about who they get the money from as long as they get it.

Of course gambling does help with employment,too, for those people who can take advantage of a losing addict's desperation like loan sharks and such.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 7:08 pm • # 11 
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course gambling does help with employment,too, for those people who can take advantage of a losing addict's desperation like loan sharks and such.

Along with dealers, croupiers, carpenters, bartenders, show people, cooks, janitors, security staff, accountants, managers, etc, etc.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 7:13 pm • # 12 
true, oskar, but many of them would still be employed if only the ones who can afford it gambled. I was talking about the ones who may be employed when losing addicts gamble.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 7:21 pm • # 13 
Who is going to decide who can afford to gamble and who can't? What patron is going to give a casino or state employee permission to check their finances?

I don't see that working at all.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 7:23 pm • # 14 
Excuse me....... I said that will never happen didn't I?


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 7:59 pm • # 15 
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grumpyauntjeanne wrote:
true, oskar, but many of them would still be employed if only the ones who can afford it gambled. I was talking about the ones who may be employed when losing addicts gamble.


Not as many, though, but I get your point.
Thing is, can you prevent addictions by denying them legal access to their vice or do they simply continue illegally?
Reminds me of the war on drugs.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 8:12 pm • # 16 
no, I'm not really arguing that anything can be done any more than with drugs, alcohol, etc. With addictions the addict has to be willing to help themselves, they have to want help. I just get frustrated because I hate losing people or seeing people destroyed because of their addictions. I hate casinos, but the lotteries hit the addicts, too.


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PostPosted: 09/25/13 9:33 pm • # 17 

Well, addictive drugs are either illegal or available only by prescription. There's no reason for them to be illegal or by prescription other than to protect the public from addiction.

If drugs are regulated because they are addictive, why not gambling?


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PostPosted: 09/26/13 2:44 am • # 18 
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There's no reason for them to be illegal or by prescription other than to protect the public from addiction.

How 'bout because they could be dangerous.


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PostPosted: 09/26/13 5:48 am • # 19 
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Thing is, can you prevent addictions by denying them legal access to their vice or do they simply continue illegally?


Bingo! I lived with one who did. It's been tried. Prohibition. It's being tried now. War on drugs. We've seen how successful those are or have been.


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