USA

When I tell him that Britain is about to open its doors to the giant Vegas-based gaming corporations, and that our Government believes this will both help to control gambling and boost the national economy, he gazes at me as if I was one of the mugs he once fleeced. "If your country thinks it's going to control anything by doing this, they are having a joke," he chortles. "If Blair thinks that, he's a bigger smacked ass than I thought. Let me spell this out: casinos equal crime. I know, because I was on the other side of that equals sign. And I can tell you of 100 people who will say the same." ... Americans are alarmed by independent research proving that wherever a casino is built, there is a rise in every category of crime, from robbery to rape, from loan-sharking to prostitution. There is also a significant increase in family break- down, bankruptcy, child-neglect and - inevitably - in the number of suicides, which are five times the national average in Las Vegas. Taking all these factors into account, respected economics professor Earl Grinols - who assures me he has no moral objection to casinos - calculates that for every dollar the casino industry puts into a state's economy, three dollars must be spent on dealing with the social damage it does. Danger of the super-casinos heading our way, Daily Mail, 24 May 2006. [Download and read for yourself the Grinols & Mustard published research here and here.]

The late economist/urban planner Bennett Harrison and others came up with a name that's a perfect fit to describe the economy of the last decade: "The Casino Economy". There was a reason they called it the Casino Economy. There's lots of losers. ... We've all heard that the '90s and the "New Economy" ushered in a new era of the "citizen investor". However, tens of millions of working family "investors", whether through pension funds or the blossoming variety of mutual funds, etc., never signed up for Russian Roulette. ... The problem with casino bets and Russian Roulette is that somebody always loses. From There Was a Reason They Called It... The Casino Economy, 2003, by Thomas Croft, Director of the Heartland Network.