🤑 Opinion: The harm that casinos do - CNN

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Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. That's no longer true. Those in the upper ranks of the income distribution rarely, if ever, make it a weekly habit to gamble at the local casino. The Institute for American Values is sometimes described as a socially conservative group, but with important caveats. Are Americans content to allow the growth of an industry that consciously exploits the predictable weakness of the most vulnerable people? Read the full Institute for American Values study for yourself and see how much is, quite literally, at sake.{/INSERTKEYS}{/PARAGRAPH} Modern casino gambling is computer gambling. If not, it's never too late to find a better way. It's the problem gambler who keeps the casino in business. Casinos do not revive local economies. Some states require casinos to disclose their payouts. Others leave that decision up to the casino, as in Georgia and California. 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. They act as parasites upon them. A new report by the Institute for American Values presents the answer. 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. {PARAGRAPH}{INSERTKEYS}Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. These newly authorized casinos are not Las Vegas-style grand hotels. Those in the lower ranks do. To obtain independent results, the Institute for American Values was obliged, ironically, to rely on studies funded by governments in Britain and Canada. When New Jersey allowed casinos into Atlantic City back in , casino advocates promised that gambling would revive the town's fading economy. The IAV is as worried that casinos aggravate income inequality as by their negative impact on family stability. The money that comes to the casinos, stays in the casinos. Until the late s, casino gambling was illegal almost everywhere in the country. That's the challenge the casino industry puts to its critics. Communities located within 10 miles of a casino exhibit double the rate of problem gambling. Their customers come from nearby. Is this really OK? It's difficult to answer exactly, because U. Those in the upper ranks rarely, if ever, contribute a large share of their income to the state's take of casino revenues. It's staying in the zone. More Videos Don't bring Google Glass to Vegas First year boom for New York casino For some heavy players, the goals is not winning money. Slot machine payouts vary state by state. They don't stay overnight. Those in the lower ranks of the income distribution often do. Perhaps most surprisingly: they don't play cards. Low-income workers and retirees provide the bulk of the customers for the modern casino industry. They don't watch a show or eat in a fine restaurant. Small "wins" are administered at the most psychologically effective intervals, but the math is remorseless: the longer you play, the more you lose. Today, casinos are allowed in 23 states. David Frum says casinos prey on the Americans who can least afford to lose money. How heavily does gambling weigh upon the poor, the elderly, the less educated, and the psychologically vulnerable? In others, that information is kept confidential. The impact of casinos on local property values is "unambiguously" negative, according to the National Association of Realtors. 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. But merchants who expected foot traffic to return to the city's main street, Atlantic Avenue, were sorely disappointed. 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. Liquor stores and cash-for-gold outlets now line the city's once-premier retail strip. David Frum. 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. 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. The casinos did create jobs as promised. Story highlights David Frum says a new report makes clear the damage casinos do He says they extract earnings from Americans least able to afford it Casinos are bad for property values, don't revive troubled neighborhoods, he says Frum: Government benefits from taxes on casinos and officials don't question the harm. 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. Unsurprisingly, such communities also suffer higher rates of home foreclosure and other forms of economic distress and domestic violence.