filed under Economics
I suppose this is good news?
6:46PM ON
03/23/2008
BY
Dave Segal
From the GlobeDARTMOUTH, Mass.—Rhode Island residents last year for the first time spent more money at gambling facilities in their home state than they did in Connecticut.
That’s according to a new study by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.
UMass professor Clyde Barrow says Ocean State citizens spent an estimated $271 million at the Twin River and Newport Grand slot parlors in 2007, compared to an estimated $261 million at the Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos in Connecticut.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:36AM
joe bernstein Says:
Yeah-great news.I worked at Lincoln Park for a few years after retiring from the feds and I had never spent any time in gambling venues before.What a disgusting place it was.Most of the customers were not the so-called “high rollers”-they were people who didn’t seem that they could really afford to feed the machines.It’s all a shell game-you can’t win in the long run and I believe a lot of rent,food,and heat money went into the slots.One day a bunch of women came in straight from a demonstration at the PUC over gas rates and shutoffs.They still had their buttons on their clothing proclaiming their grievences which is why I knew who they were.I couldn’t believe that they couldn’t pay for heat,but they could gamble.Why would they?Because of the false hope that gambling halls dangle before people’s eyes.the gambling industry is a regressive basis for economic development and has to be self limiting at some point,because the farther the economy goes into the crapper,the less money and credit will be available for gambling.The bubble will deflate and destabilize further an already disastrous budget crisis for the state.When I was in grade school,we used to get maps of the USA,beautiful productions in color,with pictures of various products superimposed on each state to represent what drove the economies there.I’d hate to see those maps today.More gambling is the last thing this state needs.
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