The push to allow casino gambling is a hot topic here in Massachusetts. Gambling is economically regressive. Much of the money comes from those who can least afford to spend it — day laborers, people on Social Security, etc. The only valid argument that I see favoring Massachusetts casinos is keeping the state’s gamblers from spending their money at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. WGBH radio in Boston, which recently retooled to compete with FM news leader WBUR, has been doing a series on casino gambling.
http://www.wgbh.org/news/lastresort.cfm
I was surprised to hear that Mohegan Sun wants to develop a casino in Massachusetts.Their chosen site is Palmer, which is one of the many failed mill towns in the region. Apparently Mohegan Sun executives feel Palmer is far enough away from Uncasville, Connecticut that they won’t be competing with themselves.
The decline of communities like Palmer has been going on for a very long time. Over 30 years ago, I spent a day with Nixon-Watergate attorney John Dean, who was speaking at my college, and while we were driving through Western Massachusetts we talked about how many of the once-thriving textile mill towns were in trouble. Is casino gambling a way out of financial desperation? I don’t think so. I think it causes more desperation than it prevents, but if it happens my feeling is very simple: NIMBY.
Casino gambling is just another version of the trickle-down theory of economics, that never trickled down from the top very well in actual practice… in my opinion. Other than the revitalization of a strip along the famous boardwalk, Atlantic City, New Jersey was not restored to its former glory days by the introduction of casino gambling. It remained a heads-up town riddled with crime and poverty, just a few blocks away from the slot machines and craps tables. Menial jobs were created for casino hotel chambermaids, a handful of croupier positions and middle management jobs, but mainly the fat cats at the top of the pyramid just got fatter.
I am not a native American, so I couldn’t – and shouldn’t -comment on a decision for or against casinos on tribal lands. That’s their choice, and each individual tribe understands its own issues to grapple with, better than anybody else. But if I were in their moccasins, I’d be extremely careful about more rip-offs by Paleface, in the form of casino developers looking to help the tribe. If Atlantic City is any example, lining the pockets of top executives working within the casino industry seems to be the highest priority.