make your dreams come true

No.

I could stop there. But the folks in Cedar Rapids who insist that Iowans are desperately looking for the economic heart charge that casinos have delivered across the state. If you didn’t recognize that as sarcasm, I must be losing my touch. Believe me it was sarcasm and believe me Iowa needs another casino like it needs another Steve King. But we seem to have gotten several replications of Steve King last fall and most likely we will eventually get another casino. The money boys demand another way to fleece the sheep and our legislature will most likely dutifully fall in line.

“Casinos and prisons are a hell of a thing to build an economy on.” I do not know who said that or if I even have the quote correct. I believe it was said during an early ‘90s governor’s race in Iowa, but I can’t find any attribution online. But I have always felt that was a great statement about the direction of the economy in Iowa at that time. Casinos and prisons look to local politicians like a quick infusion of money usually from the outside that will provide some jobs and some notoriety to his or her political district.

What you never hear about especially in the case of casinos is the problems that come with this quick fix to the local economy. Casino companies come in with promises of jobs, “recreation”, bringing in money from outside areas and other promises that are hard to track. What you never hear them talk about is the social costs that casinos create. Broken homes, depleted finances, lost jobs are just a few of the social costs hidden behind the glitz and glitter of the casino. While most states collect some funds from casinos for problem gamblers, these funds seldom come close to covering the damage they cause. Guess who is left to pick up the tab?

Like so many other things, in a free society it is hard to stop those who are determined to throw their money away from doing it. Since we can’t do that, we should try not to make it so attractive nor should we allow casinos and other “gaming” industry to slough off their responsibility for the social cost they create. Much like cigarettes and cancer the cause and effect are fairly clear cut. Thus much like the cigarette industry, gaming should be tightly controlled and they should be made responsible for the social costs they create.

Unlike other industries where raw materials are changed into products or services, gambling or “gaming” – as the industry itself prefers to call it – is basically in business to take money from one person and move it to another person without any real value added at any point. For this they rake an amount off the top. The money they take off the top need not be large if the amounts wagered are large enough. As a friend told me once Las Vegas was built on a 1% margin. That should give you an idea of how much money they handle.

In the early days of the emerging gambling industry in Iowa, many Mississippi River towns opted to have some out of state company anchor a river boat to their shores to take part in Iowa’s oddball version of the gambling casino – the river boat. The river towns were led to believe that a casino on the riverfront which was usually the old downtown area in most of these cities could be the catalyst to revive the old core business district. So river boats moved in and the downtowns spiffed up with new motels and eateries expecting a kind of a gold rush type effect.

What they found was people driving to the boats, getting fleeced and getting the heck out of town in a hurry. Few meals eaten and very few staying overnight and certainly no shopping downtown. Many cities tried to stay the course hoping that what they were experiencing was just start up problems. One city saw it for what it was. Muscatine and the good people of Muscatine county told the river boat to pull up anchor and head down the river as quick as they could. I think there was a threat from the river boat company that Muscatine would never see a riverboat again. That was another good reason to tell them to set sail. Once gone they wouldn’t be back to fleece the locals.

But of course for those who are compelled to gamble that only moved the problem. Now as then Iowa has more than enough ways to be fleeced. Our state has some 22 gambling halls, strategically placed within a short drive for most Iowans. That includes one to fleece the good citizens of Nebraska in Council Bluffs, since Nebraska is one of the few states that has not taken up the quick cash from gambling. We also have two or three lotteries (does Iowa still have the Iowa Lottery?), race tracks I think, scratch off games and no doubt all sorts of localized gambling for good causes like bingo in the church basements.

So do we really need another hall to fleece our citizens with more promises of jobs and contributions of money to good causes? I say no, no matter what kind of lipstick Cedar Rapids tries to put on this next monster, it will be one more in a long line of monsters that eat paychecks and create social costs that they in no way will cover. Shoot, if I had my druthers we’d put warning signs up around casinos like the warnings on cigarette packages – “Warning: Gambling or Gaming may be hazardous to your home, your bank account and your life. Enter with Caution”

Well I can dream can’t I?

Here is a study on the effects of a casino proposed for Toronto, Ontario from last year. This is just a look at the health effects, but it is plenty scary. There are many other studies of the effects of casino gambling online, none that I saw were very kind to the “gaming” industry.