Comments:New Jersey officials: Stimulus bill hurting Atlantic City casinos

= Is Ken Calemmo right to suggest that the gaming industry is as important as manufacturing, retail or finance? =

Gambling is an economic sink
Casinos don't produce products nor services. Most people loose money when gambling at a casino. The probabilities are set so that on the whole the house always wins. The stimulus money should go to things that produces wealth and secondary jobs/businesses, like manufacturing and infrastructure. That way the effects of the stimulus money becomes many times larger through its circulation, and results in things that can be used. Not to mention casinos' negative impact on the economy out ways its resulting jobs, since most of the money is taken out of the system. If anything the destruction of casinos may improve the economy. --Sparky1 (talk) 02:04, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * that is a bunch of rubish. it is a souce of income for the county as a whole. you get hotels, airports, and inproved public transportation. now with all these benifits and more i did not name, you still say that you want gabling to go a way? it brings in forgin pockets which sitmulates our economy even more.--weirdjrc (talk) 16:30, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You are just considering the local economic effects of Gambling. The economic crisis that we are seeing today exists on a fundamental level nationally and globally.  In order to obtain long term economic stability and growth we have to focus on wealth production.  Improvements on infrastructure and transportation does provide something that can be used in the economy, so that generates wealth.  Gambling does not produce new wealth, it draws people in who has existing wealth.  Local services like hotels, airports, etc produce temporary wealth for as long as the experience of the service lasts.  Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that service jobs are not necessary, what I'm saying is that they should be based on a wealth producers like manufacturing, not the ultimate wealth sink, that is gambling.  In fact, not basing our economy on wealth producers and structuring it upside down is what got us into this mess.  Besides acting as an attraction to support local service businesses (having the same positive effect as casinos), manufacturing also has one of the highest economic multipliers, because the products of manufactures create a need for other manufactures, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and service businesses.  Despite many American Manufacturers going out of business or overseas over the past few decades, it's still a $6 Trillion industry, much larger than gambling.  The stimulus money would have the most affect to the economy in manufacturing.  The positive economic effects of casinos are strictly attraction based, which is OK if the economic problem was strictly isolated in the local area of the casino location, and the economy in the rest of the country was booming, leaving a surplus to be attracted to that area.  However, casinos will not be what takes us out of this national economic slump.