We Can Always Build More Casinos, Right?

Nate Silver had an interesting article in Esquire worth reading in its entirety --

Gaming revenues received by local casinos [in Las Vegas]were down 12 percent in 2008 as compared with a year earlier. (This figure and all others in this article are reported on an inflation-adjusted basis.) And 2009 will be even worse: So far, revenues are off almost 15 percent from 2008's already depressed figures. The recession, then, appears set to cost Las Vegas more than a quarter of its business.

...desperate state governments looking to casinos to bail them out of their budget nightmares are likely to be disappointed.

Gambling revenues peaked in 2002 in Illinois, in 2000 in Mississippi, and in 2006 in Detroit, which had only begun to permit gambling ten years earlier.

What we've witnessed, indeed, is something of a race to the bottom.

The sort of customers these lower-end casinos attract, moreover, may be exactly the sort who shouldn't be spending their money on gambling. A 2005 study by the Federal Reserve found a statistically significant relationship between proximity to casinos in Mississippi and bankruptcy rates in the region, which includes impoverished states like Alabama and Tennessee.