Nevada's depravity

THE RELUCTANCE TO TAX OURSELVES: Nevada's depravity

By WILLIAM M. EPSTEIN
AND WILLIAM N. THOMPSON
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL
Rather than a fiscal crisis, Nevada suffers a crisis of greed, selfishness and stupidity. The state's elementary and secondary public education system, its universities and its other public services -- notably child welfare, health and mental health -- are already among the most poorly funded and weakest in the nation. Yet this wealthy state is currently in the process of further reducing its commitment to public services.

Next year, when the federal stimulus money dries up, the reluctance of Nevadans to tax themselves will decimate the university system and public education and shred other public protections. Nevada is one of the nation's wealthiest states, yet year after year its residents make the least effort of any state in the nation to fund public services or to mount a gracious effort to nurture its civic culture.

Even in consideration of the economic beating the state has taken in the past few years, there is still the financial capacity to fund our core public services at decent levels. Only the will is lacking. Encouraged by the state's influential gambling corporations, Nevadans dump their discretionary dollars into gambling rather than tax themselves to secure even mediocre levels of public services. Democracy can apparently thrive without decency.

Adults in Clark County gamble a lot more than do average Americans. That is to be expected with more casinos and more slot machines than any other community in America. Overall players in Las Vegas casinos and gaming locations (including bars and grocery stores) lose $9.328 billion a year. But how much of this comes from locals rather than tourists?

Drawing on the official Nevada Gaming Abstract and assuming that 95 percent of Strip casino gambling is by tourists, that off-Strip casino gambling from tourists amounts to per hotel room losses found on the Strip, and that little if any gambling on the 15,000 machines in bars, convenience stores and grocery stores is done by tourists, we can calculate that 78.8 percent the Las Vegas gambling take comes from tourists and 21.2 percent comes from local residents.

In short, the average adult in Clark County incurs gambling losses of $1,511 per year while the average adult American loses $391 per year. Thus, local Clark County adults lose $1.462 billion per year above the typical American gambling loss.

Consequently, it is not surprising that pathological and problem gambling in Las Vegas greatly exceeds national averages. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission's surveys found that 0.6 percent of adults were pathological gamblers, while 1.6 percent of adults were problem gamblers. A study of Las Vegas adults found that 3.5 percent were in the pathological category, and 2.9 percent were labeled problem gamblers. Studies have documented the costs that troubled gamblers impose on other people and on governments -- $66.4 million a year to the Nevada public sector through various welfare programs and criminal justice and court systems.

Following a report of the Tax Policy Center, in federal fiscal year 2002 Nevada had the ninth largest tax capacity among the 50 states but made the 43th weakest effort to provide revenues for public services. However, in light of the huge portion of state revenues contributed by tourists -- perhaps as much as 30 percent of the total -- Nevadans are the least willing Americans to tax themselves. Even the poorest states -- Mississippi and West Virginia -- are far more willing to sustain public services than Nevada.

Nevada has no personal income tax and Nevada's tax on a hotel rooms is low, only 12 percent, compared with Atlanta (15 percent), New York City (more than 14.5 percent), Denver (15.85 percent) and San Francisco (more than 15.5 percent).

Moreover, lotteries, rejected in Nevada, return 35 percent of their face value to the states.

Las Vegas vices -- gambling, prostitution, pornography, gluttony and alcoholism -- are the sources of its pride and income; however, they are not its problems. Whatever the moral considerations, every society needs a boy's town. Yet it is positively foolhardy to allow the spirit of the libertine, even through the most fastidiously mannered corporations, to corrupt society.

The local sin is not sensual but civic, as gambling and the hustler's ethos corrupt local sensibilities. Many of America's poorer cities -- Buffalo, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Miami, to name a few -- are more hospitable than Las Vegas to artists, writers and the creative community in general, providing a richer cultural life of popular and high music, theater, folk arts, dance and so forth. Their states all make greater tax efforts to fund basic public services, notably education. All offer superior public services.

Nevadans prefer to gamble, an activity with fewer social and personal benefits than sleeping, compulsive talking, mud-wrestling or watching traffic go by. If even half of the money spent by local residents on gambling was diverted into public education and Nevada made even median tax efforts, the state would be able to fund first-rate public services while avoiding a deficit.

The gambling industry has tried to soften its hard edge by selling itself as a legitimate recreation, in the industry's newspeak, "gaming." "Gaming" calls up the imagery of a sentimental grandmother betting a few dollars on the age of her grandchildren, of sports fans putting their knowledge and insight to the test of a dollar wager on baseball, of penny-ante poker, dollar nine-ball, an office football pool, and flipping quarters.

But more than $50 per week of discretionary family income dumped into slot machines is gambling -- the fool's magical hope for a cash windfall that subverts social decency.

It is too simple and convenient to lay the burden for Nevada's depravity on its gambling corporations, surely among the least civic-minded of any American business. In this scenario, the citizen has fallen to the ubiquitous temptations of gambling, with umbilical cords sucking their money into slot machines.

More reasonable, a confluence of values binds the casinos, their employees and the state's residents. Many migrated to Nevada with an affection for gambling and the "hospitality" trades, bringing with them greed and selfishness, the soul diseases of the gambling ethos. In the deep eye of barmaids, dealers, pit bosses, musicians, dancers, doormen, bellhops and change people there is an isolating image of the sucker who pays the bills. The hustler's view of life explains in large part the civic depravity of the state. The problem is not gambling per se but rather the Nevadans who gamble, the corporations that prey on gambling and the corrosive ethos they create.

In imitation of the colonial French, the United States might initiate a Foreign Legion, headquartered in Las Vegas. The location is providential, not simply for the desert, the desperate characters and the brothels but for the enormous number of natives who need to be civilized. Nevadans would thrive with less gambling and more education. By destroying the state's public schools and universities, the state also loses its most capable Legionnaires -- its professors and teachers -- dedicated to soften Nevada's depravity into the customary commercial sin.

William M. Epstein is professor of social work at UNLV. William N. Thompson is a professor of public administration at UNLV.