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Apr

13

Casinos Down: “those who know when to fold’em are foldin’ ‘em”


The New York Times Magazine published the article, “Bad Bet,” in today’s edition. Ohio isn’t mentioned but the citizen turnback of Massachusett’s “destination casinos” was, and the very possible defeat of Maryland’s casino effort got ink too.

Do you see yourself in this description:

Casinos are marketed to voters the same way they are marketed to patrons — by accentuating moments of exhilaration and playing down the way the business is designed to take in more money than it pays out. The image of the gambler that casinos want to convey is of someone wild, free, savvy, like a rogue in a cologne ad or a John Ford movie. He knows when to hold ’em, knows when to fold ’em. This image is meant not only to flatter the gambler but also to legitimize the casino. Mister Free Spirit wouldn’t play a rigged game.

But I bet you don’t think of yourself as gullible, now do you? But maybe you should:

There is a catch, though. The most important segment of gamblers is not free. And those gamblers are important because they are not free. Compulsive and problem gamblers make up only 2.4 percent of gamblers, according to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, but they account for a third of receipts, or more. A 1995 Minnesota study found that 1 percent of patrons made half the wagers. Where you have saturation gambling, as in Las Vegas, about two-thirds of residents at least try it — and 2.4 percent of that two-thirds is a ton of problem gamblers. It translates into rises in suicide, embezzlement and bankruptcy that have real social costs.

Aw, come on Jill, what you’re saying is so tired. That price is worth paying to keep the government from telling me what I can and can’t do with my money.

Really? Let me go count the number of emails I’ve received so far from the current Ohio duo trying to dupe you. While I try to count that high, read this:

Nonpathological gambling has its costs, too. Introduce casinos in Massachusetts, and you will indeed recapture some of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Bay Staters drop in the resorts of Connecticut. But you will also capture a lot of money that people would have spent in local restaurants and movie theaters. The infrastructure required for gambling — from road building to hiring new police — is costly as well. Once you make those adjustments, the economic upside of gambling evaporates. The economist Earl Grinols estimates the ratio of gambling costs to gambling benefits at higher than three to one. Voters sense this. The rule of thumb, according to Grinols, is that pro-gambling interests lose referendum battles whenever they do not outspend their opponents by at least 75 to 1.

Damn, that’s a lot cash the Ohio Learn and Earn folks didn’t spend. Guess they didn’t really want casinos in the first place, eh? Then again, how much have the pro-casino folks spent in Ohio since the first ballot was defeated in the 1990s? I’ve lost track but I’m sure someone knows. Have they hit 75 to 1 yet?

In conclusion, here’s what the article wrote, and I can’t think of anything to take issue with:

Gambling appears a less glamorous habit when the country is digging its way out of mortgage and credit-card debt. In mid-March, the Colorado Division of Gaming announced that revenues at local gambling resorts were down 10 percent. The next day, Moody’s Investors Service reported that casino revenues in January dropped 17 percent in Illinois, 10 percent in Atlantic City and 8 percent in Indiana. Maybe Massachusetts knows something these places don’t. But you don’t have to live in the Athens of America to see that our economy is one in which those who know when to fold ’em are foldin’ ’em.

There are not a lot of reasons to concede the issues related to what someone might think is allowing the government to regulate behavior that we don’t think should be regulated. But the demise of our fellow human, especially the humans most negatively affected by gambling, is one of them. And it’s got nothing to do with whether the act of risking your money is or isn’t “right.” Especially when the gambler is really risking the money of people who don’t want to be risking it.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 4:07 pm April 13th, 2008 in Civil Rights, Culture, Gambling, Government, Marketing, Ohio, Politics, Social Issues 

Comments

3 Responses to “Casinos Down: “those who know when to fold’em are foldin’ ‘em””

  1. 1 Daniel Jack Williamson on April 13th, 2008 4:27 pm

    Thanks for this blog entry, Jill. Your writings against gambling are always compelling, and I love you for that.

  2. 2 Joseph on April 13th, 2008 4:39 pm

    So you’re saying I’m STILL gonna have to keep driving all the way to West Virginia and/or Indiana to play poker?

  3. 3 Oengus on April 14th, 2008 8:37 am

    Gambling should go with tourism, like Monte Carlo as an augmentation to an existing economy that is tourist based. A cruise ship, not in an urban center, Vegas is also good place to buy used furniture, appliances, clothing, cars, and jewelry. Its true people, the local are hocking their stuff to run back to the casinos.

    I would like to see these numbers detailed, 2.4% is equal to 33% of receipts. Off the top of my head that would mean that, the 2.4% would have to have some serious access to capital. I suppose that if all gamblers were registered and you had extreme loses your bank would be able to stop you from getting a second mortgage on the house?

    I also wonder what percentages of payouts go back to what percentage and are they part of the 2.4%.

    Since nobody swipes an ID card entering the casino, you really do not know. I would think that based on your income and your income to dept ratio it would be entirely possible to set a limit. That would eliminate anyone from attempting to gamble to get out of dept and stop them from going into dangerously high dept.

    Hey, we should have that restriction on everything!

    Any use of math for predictions of complex multivariate scenarios is inherently nothing more than guessing. Math’s best use is in process reengineering, and then it becomes controlling results rather than guessing what happened.

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