A USA Today Editorial: Expanding legalized gambling doesn’t guarantee easy money

Posted by Kendall Harmon

According to recent surveys, serious proposals to seek revenue from new or expanded gambling operations are percolating this winter in at least a third of the states.

There's just one problem: The most recent evidence says the promised riches won't materialize. A few examples:

• Kansas authorized state casinos in 2007 on the notion that $200 million could be raised each year for debt reduction, capital improvements and property tax relief. Nearly two years later, private casino developers have pulled out of three of the four proposed casino sites, fearing that there's little money to be made in today's down economy.

This isn't the primary reason to oppose it, but it is yet another one. Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Gambling • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government

2 Comments
Posted February 9, 2009 at 6:22 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Dan Crawford wrote:

State Lotteries and all the gambling schemes devised as “tax reductions and tax replacements” are frauds. They have always been so, and they will continue to be. Governments should know better, but unfortunately they are run by politicians who are paid by the gambling “industry”.

February 9, 7:53 am | [comment link]
2. RichardKew wrote:

Let me declare a personal interest when it comes to discussing gambling—my grandfather was a self-made man and became a leading citizen of his community who was financially very successful. He was also a self-ruined man because he loved horses and gambled away everything that he possessed at the racetrack. This means that from childhood I came to deplore what gambling does to people, and as a pastor for forty years I have seen similar fruit borne again and again.

In addition, as communities introduce legalized gambling they open the door for all sorts of corrupt and corrupting behavior and influences within the culture of the place. Something that we don’t seem to be able to learn is that there is no such thing as free lunch

February 10, 3:41 am | [comment link]
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