What are your thoughts on the NYS constitutional amendment to allow 7 new casinos in New York State?

We have a casino about 7 miles from my house that we had to vote on a few years ago.
It has not changed a thing except to bring in money to the area. It’s off by itself pretty much, so it doesn’t interfere with traffic flow either.
There is no increase in crime if that is what you are asking also.

Well, we have a casino here in town. It’s been a good tourism draw, the jobs are nice to have around and they pay well, and only hire non-criminals.

People can become addicted to gambling with or without a casino. I think it’s a strawman argument. Besides, having a casino is a draw for the treatment facilities for such addictions, which might not be around without them.

GA’s to each of you. I know the gambling is available, legal or not. But is it the right economic engine to help the area more than it hurts?

Oh jeez…I hate casinos! Here in Northern CA. we have all the indian casinos, jobs maybe, but otherwise attracts low lifey, illiterate morons IMO.
The newest in my area ” Redhawk” even has it’s own fucking parkway. I am totally opposed to casinos and more Walmarts too.

First, you would have to establish how it “hurts”.

Casinos are effectively a tax on rich people who are bad at math. I’m totally OK with that.

@Seek_Kolinahr Have you ever been in a casino? I see more lower and middle income people, not the rich people. The one’s that can least afford it seem to be the main users.

I go with friends, sometimes. Most people I know are really smart about it. Only going in with a $10 for playing and a $10 for drinks. Leave the credit cards at home. Or we pay for admission to the pool and forget the slots altogether.

I can’t speak for what the “majority” of people do, but there are way more lower and middle income people by population density, so obviously, there will be more of them in the casino.

People are going to spend their disposable money somewhere. They could dump it in a slot machine, or their bar tab, or at a movie theater, or whatever. As far as I see it, it’s just one more thing to do on a Friday night.

@Seek_Kolinahr True, I see them at the lottery terminals outside of the grocery store all the time this time of the month.

I see Casinos as a failure of enlightenment thinking, but prefer them at least in revenue terms to illegal gambling.

Until we reign in leveraged options trading by corporations, I find it laughable to restrict petty gambling.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Do you think many people even know what leveraged options trading involves?

@Adirondackwannabe No. I don’t think they do. Which I find a constant source of amusement when somebody is telling me how economics works on Fluther.

You’ll find more middle and upper income people in the casinos. They have more disposable income to spend. At least this is what I’ve noticed growing up in Las Vegas and now living between two majors rivers in the Midwest that both have riverboat casinos.

I think they are benign to good for the most part, but they offer extremely destructive outlets for some people. The main cautionary tale I can tell is from college. A bunch of us in the dorm became good friends with one of the cleaning ladies. She used to get off work and take the bus two hours out to the casino, play the slots until 4 and then head back. She was a single mom and her son was about 10 at the time. We all tried to look out for him some – they lived close by, and he was very sweet and mature and so was unusually easy for a large, loose group of college kids to collectively watch – but it was really just a sad and impossible situation. I know she very well may have found another place to gamble if the casino weren’t there, or taken the way longer drive to the other casino every night – but I can’t help but feel like its presence was simply and straightforwardly bad for this kid’s life. So…I just don’t know about casinos. They seem like a tax on the poor and addicted at least as much as a tax on the rich and stupid.

Casinos are the last refuge and false hope of a downtrodden part of society who think they have no recourse left to aquire some level of wealth but sheer luck at gambling and at the same time escape into a fantasy world where they see themselves as millionaires as a result of beating the house.
It is a symptom of a culture that is close to collapse.
good riddance

“In the casino, the cardinal rule is to keep them playing & to keep them coming back.
The longer they play, the more they lose & in the end, we get it all.”

@Adirondackwannabe: I am currently away and so I had to do an absentee ballot (in other words, I already voted) and I voted no on that one. For personal reasons I am anti-casino.

My confusion was with Props 4 and 5. I didn’t really read up on them, and at the time I filled in the little circles, took a guess and hope I did the right thing.

@jca 4 and 5 are land related deals in the Adirondack Park, so they aren’t anything that are too earthshaking. I think they’re both worth approving. But that’s just my opinion.

Casinos just take money from people while giving it to someone else—I suppose this is pretty much the basis economic activity, but casinos don’t seem to produce a particularly productive or useful service.

I don’t know how it will be with this casino, but the ones here tend to rely on a steady base of regular addicts who feel compelled to partake in a self-destructive activity, even though they know how irrational and self-destructive it is. People lose their families, their homes, and sometimes even commit suicide as a result of gambling— and these are often intelligent and materially successful people.

Some may argue that people want to gamble, and casinos just supply a service that’s in demand. And the gamblers are personally deciding that the time spent in the casino is of “value” to them.

This may well be a value judgement on my part, but this seems like a symptom of a dysfunctional society and economic system. I think it’s a completely irrational allocation of resources, and although it’s of benefit to some (owners, managers, investors etc), the net effect is negative and costly.

I’ve been a gambler and have worked as a croupier.

@Kropotkin The same argument can be made for bars, hookah lounges, cigar shops, and night clubs.

Of course, I live in an area that does quite a bit of business in greyhound dog racing, so getting in a twist about poor people visiting a casino seems like blatant hypocrisy when the people with money get to gamble at an institutionalized animal abuse factory.

You left out strip clubs and gentlemen clubs @Seek_Kolinahr. I’m sure there are many more examples that we could come up with.

Several years ago they wanted to put a casino in the same county as one small town I live by (Under 20,000). Every preacher condemned it from every pulpit as the highway to perdition. It was voted down.

What happened? They moved the whole plan a few miles away where it’s in an even smaller town, and has been a blessing, as the town’s one major industry closed. It’s not like New York is the size of Texas…if the people want to gamble legally, they’ll find a state (or shuttle to a state) that allows it. MY opinion is that you’d just be depriving the State of New York a lot of revenue by stopping the casinos.

We learned from Prohibition that you can’t outlaw something simply because it might be addictive to some people.

@Seek_Kolinahr Yes, I’d apply the same argument to those things and more. However, I do think casinos, and gambling in general, offer a unique opportunity for risk of ruin which other sectors of the entertainment industry do not—I can spend a lot and get a hangover at a nightclub, but I’m probably not going to lose my house or business.

Just to be clear. I’m not really interested in banning casinos or prohibiting various parts of the entertainment industry, since they’re nothing but a symptom to me. I would probably only regulate casinos so they have to offer game rules with a much smaller house advantage (which I think is not the case in the USA.) I just find casinos an interesting and extreme form of consumerism, which I am critical of in general—and I’m not in the mood to rant about that.

Casinos are unpleasant, but if NYS doesn’t allow them people will just go to states that do, and NYS gambling addicts will just go there – or to the mafia.

I was neutral about it until my elderly great-aunt started gambling. It changed her life, though there haven’t been any extreme problems, just little things. She pinches pennies like never before so she has more to gamble. She’s lost most of her interest in hanging out with her grandkids. In fact, she’s lost interest in most things. She’s become super-secretive about her whereabouts, which is weird in our tight-knit extended family (which is super gossipy, I should add). This has caused major arguments with my mother, who my great-aunt expects to cover for her (but my mother hates lying to people). She only speaks a handful of English, which has led to some weird experiences, like getting lost on the buses to Atlantic City, getting mugged a couple of times (in NJ and NY), etc.).

She hasn’t gone broke or lost all her savings or anything like that, but she has generally become a less pleasant person to deal with who brings unneeded drama into our lives.