The data backs this up economists who have studied the impact of casino gambling see either modest benefits or regression. Legalized casinos resulted in a now-familiar pattern: the impact on local businesses has often been a bust, and the profits from the gaming houses tend to go to outside resort corporate behemoths, not mom-and-pop stores. Within fifteen years of the arrival of casino gambling, unemployment in Atlantic City was more than two times the New Jersey average. Increased employment failed to materialize. Atlantic City’s boardwalk (via Flickr/Luke H.

As in other casino locales, local restaurants found they could not compete with the cheap grub offered by casinos intent on luring gamblers. Its imitators, including Atlantic City, relied on locals and day hoppers, who play at the casinos and then go home, contributing few outside tourist dollars to their localities. In Atlantic City, a third of that town’s local businesses closed within four years of the casino openings. The original gambling mecca, Las Vegas, was an isolated locale that became a tourist destination. The result was a boon in casino gambling. But Goodman argues that the concept was based on a false hope. Gambling Research Institute, notes that casino gambling increased largely because state officials wanted to collect tax revenues off gambling. Robert Goodman, who has been director of the U.S.

Nearly every American is now within a few hours’ drive of a casino.Ĭritics note that casino gambling has not delivered on its economic promises.

But the jobs argument won out, and by the 1990s, casinos were seemingly everywhere, from Native American reservations to riverboats. Moralists argued that casinos would erode the country’s moral fiber.

The politicians supporting casino gambling promoted it as a way to boost the economy and create jobs. The first legal American casino not located in Nevada opened, less than two years after New Jersey voters approved a referendum to allow gambling in the battered resort community. On May 26th, 1978, a grand social experiment began in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.

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