For more than 25 years, the casino lobby has told the American people that casinos are the engine to help Native American tribes prosper. Now The Economist, the world’s leading international magazine, spotlights how casinos have actually made tribal members poorer, pointing to a new study in the American Indian Law Journal showing that growing tribal gambling revenues can make poverty worse. The study looks at two dozen tribes in the Pacific Northwest between 2000 and 2010. During that time, casinos owned by those tribes doubled their total annual take in real terms, to $2.7 billion. Yet the tribes’ mean poverty rate rose from 25% to 29%. Some tribes did worse: among the Siletz poverty jumped from 21.1% to 37.8%. Below is both the story from The Economist and the study from the American Indian Law Journal.
Regional Casinos
The New York Times Magazine Exposes Modern Slot Machines
This must-read New York Times Magazine cover story by Gary Rivlin exposes the slot machine business as predatory and deceptive.
Casinos Failed to Bring Prosperity to Connecticut
Despite developing two of the largest casinos on the planet in the 1990s, the state of Connecticut is in dire fiscal shape. The New York Times piece below states that “Connecticut’s finances are among the most troubled in the nation: it is last or close to last in financing pension obligations and retaining reserves for emergencies, and near the top in per-capita debt…Moody’s lowered its outlook for the state’s bond rating to negative from stable.” This is just another example that casinos fail to provide the revenue promised by lobbyists of the predatory gambling trade. And what about jobs? The state has “an abysmal level of job creation and economic growth that has left the state with fewer workers employed now than in 1987.”
Slot Machines Near Misses Are Perfectly Tuned to Stoke the Addiction
The Discover Magazine blog helps explain the allure of slot machines and the difficulty that some gamblers have in walking away by highlighting that, to a gambler’s brain, a near miss provides almost the same high as a win.
Slot Machines Near Misses Are Perfectly Tuned to Stoke the Addiction
The Software and Design of Slot Machines
University of Waterloo (Canada) computer game design researcher Kevin Harrigan, whose research has made headlines around the world, recently testified before the New Hampshire Gambling Study Commission to explain the software and design features of slot machines. Through Canada’s Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Harrigan obtained slot machine design documents, called PAR Sheets. Slot machine manufacturers commissioned an army of lawyers but failed to block Dr. Harrigan’s access to this information. Without losses disguised as wins and frequent near win displays, slot machines would not be profitable.
Graphic of the Design and Technology Behind Slot Machines
Here is an excellent visual of the design and technology behind slot machines that accompanied a March 2009 Boston Globe news story on the topic titled “Glitzy video slots seen as a particular addiction risk.” (click on graphic to enlarge)
Government’s Predatory Gambling Program Surpasses the Predatory Subprime Lending Business
Prior to the massive crash of the highly-predatory subprime lending business which nearly every state Attorney General sued for their predatory practices, former Harrah’s top executive Rich Mirman boasted to Wall Street Journal reporter Christina Binkley: “I worked in the subprime lending industry. At least casinos are open about what they do.”
The infamous subprime lender Countrywide Mortgage made a lot of money and employed a lot of people by selling bad loans to citizens who could never afford to pay them back. Countrywide’s “success” was phony prosperity and it caused major damage to our economy which all of us are still paying for today. Presently, our state governments across the U.S. are full partners with corporate gambling operators whose business practices go far beyond failed subprime lenders like Countrywide.
Behind Electronic Gambling Machines
Drawing on research conducted in Las Vegas among game developers and gamblers, MIT Professor Natasha Schull provides an in-depth analysis behind the design and technology of electronic gambling machines.
National Report Concludes That Predatory Gambling Worsens Long-Term Budget Problems
A 2009 report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York Albany concluded that predatory gambling worsens long term budgetary problems for states. Read the report below to see why states that institute predatory gambling as a means to stabilize the budget are deeply disappointed time and again:
“Income from casinos and lotteries does not tend to grow over time as rapidly as general tax revenue. Expenditures on education and other programs will generally grow more rapidly than gambling revenue over time. Thus, new gambling operations that are intended to pay for normal increases in general state spending add to, rather than ease, long-term budget imbalances.”
A Nation in Debt: How We Killed Thrift, Enthroned Loan Sharks and Undermined American Prosperity
This essay written by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead appeared in the July/August 2008 issue of The American Interest. It is excerpted and adapted from For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture, a report released in May 2008 by the Commission on Thrift. Whitehead exposes how anti-thrift institutions like state lotteries, casinos, payday lenders and credit card companies hinder the average American’s ability to save their earnings and get ahead financially. These institutions have been the main contributors to the growing amount of consumer debt accumulated in recent decades. Whitehead calls on the public to reform these institutions and to advocate for a culture based on saving and wealth-building.