From a reader: Who's against our new “economic development” plan? The kooky hippies at Boston Business Journal, that's who:
One of the fundamental fallacies of the casino revenue scheme is that casinos generate new money that falls out of the sky. No, most of this money simply won't be spent elsewhere in Massachusetts . Perhaps $500 million will be redirected from Connecticut casinos. The rest is money Massachusetts residents will plunk into the pockets of casino operators and won't spend on other things: meals, clothes, vacations, toys. Lawmakers should ask for a reasonable estimate of what the impact of squeezing more from Massachusetts gamblers will have on the income and sales tax figures.
Taxing the poor through casinos is cynical and cowardly. Let's all pay for fixing our roads and bridges. Such a fundamental governmental obligation shouldn't be used to justify a policy that will hurt many businesses and diminish even more lives in the commonwealth.
Ding Dong! What's good for business is good for the Commonwealth — and vice versa! Awesome concept! Let's roll with this. Come on, BBJ editorial person: Get Sal DiMasi, Rick Lord and whoever's running the High Tech Council on the horn and let's scotch this thing in favor of a progressive income tax Constitutional amendment.
Is this just spitting in the wind? I hope not.
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Yet, of course, the problem as always is: what in God’s name does this actually mean, in practice? I doubt that the BBJ supports a progressive income tax amendment, and it does not support local option taxes. So what does it support?
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It’s one thing to be against something. I want to know what is the Boston Business Journal in favor of, in terms of increasing state revenue?
which people will read and forget about when the next issue arrives.
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It would be another for BBJ’s staffmembers to personally contact their legislators and register their opinion.
I choose … casinos! And I’m anti-casino.
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Don’t make this an either-or exercise. The casino option will win because it’s an optional tax (like the lottery) and, what the heck, I choose to opt out. My guess is most taxpayers in MA would, too.
Sal & Co. have had opportunities to raise revenue by closing corporate tax loopholes. As far as I know, that didn’t make it. Neither did the optional meals tax. Now, Governor Patrick is proposing a third way to get the revenue the state needs. Others on this site are proposing yet another way. I’d like to know what Sal thinks we should do about increasing revenue. It’s not an “either/or” situation to say that there are four serious proposals out there to raise revenue and he’s opposed all of them. Instead he has said that cities and towns should “focus on saving,” to help relieve property tax. He’s said that closing tax loopholes, “could stall decisions by employers to grow jobs”. And now he is being urged to shut down this casino plan. Fine, I agree that casinos aren’t a great idea, but they’d be less necessary if we had a Speaker which would propose that we do something more than save our pennies. Frankly, I just don’t like the idea of casino gambling, and I’d rather fight for other means of revenue. I just don’t see the opening, and I hesitate to oppose a revenue idea that something like 58% of MA residents wouldn’t mind (I think that was the number cited by the fellow who talked with Lynn on NPR). More fundamentally, I hesitate to make the argument that people cannot control themselves somehow — or rather only chronic gamblers cannot control themselves, but we’ll allow activities (alcohol) where chronic use is a problem.
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So, I would oppose casino gambling if I thought we could. But frankly, until DiMasi comes up with a more compelling revenue idea or allows other revenue proposals to pass, I don’t see how we can oppose this legislation.
that it’s absolutely not an either/or. I’m merely positing what I think would be the best solution. Closing loopholes, local option meals taxes, increased gas tax — and most crucially, finding efficiencies in what we’re already paying for should all be on the table.
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But I think we ought to have a progressive income tax that would amount to a tax cut for the vast majority of MA residents.
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I don’t think you get that choice (sorta your point, I know) but, to expand on it, it is indeed not an ‘either-or’.
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p> If the economic arguments on the anti-casino side hold water,then we’re likely, should we choose casinos, to get a tax increase as well. I’m much more in favor of a progressive tax increase.
would take a couple years to enact, our legislature could about raising the rate on Capital Gains taxes to be higher than the taxes on income from work?
One can accomplish far more damage to society by attacking the moral base of it. When one drives people into the lower realms of existence they pay far less attention to the higher and more nobler causes in life, ie community, concern about others and finally politics.
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It means authoritarian personality types are then free to get away with anything they want.
I don’t have a subscription, so I cannot read the entire article, but it seems that there are some faulty assumptions in the little bit excerpted here and that I can read on the website.
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The first is about the average casino patron. This article assumes that the only people who patronize casinos are poor people who have no self control or judgment and are going to gamble away their vacation club savings. This condescending, morally superior view has seeped its way into many of the comments on this board as well.
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I did a quick google search and found some numbers.
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73 percent of casino patrons own their own home, compared to 68 percent of average Americans.
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51 percent of casino patrons read a newspaper every day for at least 15 minutes, compared to 42 percent of average Americans.
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26 percent of casino patrons have a family income over $60,000, compared to 22 percent of average Americans.
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The average casino patron is slightly more likely to have attended college than the average American.
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So, rather than the prevailing view (at least on BMG) that casinos prey on the poor, ignorant masses, it looks like the average casino patron is actually better educated and more financially secure than the average American. So this whole paying for road improvements on the backs of the poor doesn’t ring particularly true. Also, state revenue generated by casino gambling is not a tax on any patron. People go to casinos of their own free will, much like they go to bars, movies and Red Sox games.
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Second, the article also seems to assume that casino patronage will be solely Massachusetts residents and that no new income will be generated (outside the amounts recouped from Mass. gamblers who now head to Connecticut). My understanding of the Governor’s proposal is that these are designed to be resort casinos with the goal of attracting not just Massachusetts residents, but visitors from outside the state as well. If done right, the casinos provide another type of draw for potential tourists deciding where to spend their vacation dollars.
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The “diminishing lives” and “hurting business” seems more like editorial hyperbole and rhetoric than real argument. The new casinos will provide new jobs, initially in the construction industry and then in the running and management of the casino. Will these be the highest paying jobs…no. But these new jobs are part of the Governor’s larger economic plan (along with items such as the $1 billion investment in biotech) which is trying to provide necessary jobs at every level of skill and ability. There seems to be a notion on here that if someone has a job as a waitress of hotel worker, there job isn’t as valuable or “good” as other jobs. And to the articles point, more jobs mean more people with money to spend on clothes, vacations, etc., which means more money being spent in the local economies supporting local businesses.
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Obviously bringing casinos to the state is a big deal and should be vigorously debated. However, it seems a lot of assumptions (many of them rather snobbish in my opinion) have seeped their way into the debate and are clouding any potential debate on the merits.
There is a difference between stating that ‘only poor people’ will gamble therefore gambling is bad, and stating gambling is bad (in part) because the most pain is inflicted upon the least able to recover, that is to say, the poor. Don’t get me wrong, problem gambling affects all socio-economic strata and I feel for anybody caught in the maelstrom. However, the poorest feel the hurt the most, and the most quickly and are least able to recover from it. It is the most clear, but by no means the only one, of the moral blights thrust upon us by gambling and one that engenders real and deep feeling. This is called compassion and it occupies the liberal mind a great deal.
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In addition to those already poor, this proposal, it seems to me, opens up yet another avenue to poverty for those now living above poverty. It’s an invitation to ruin in the guise of an invitation to riches…
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There’s also a great difference in the use of generics like ‘poor people’ wrt gambling and the unwillingness to abide even the specifics of one person slipping into that horror. That’s a quality of life issue, for poor people, and for me (who isn’t poor). I don’t like the idea of living in a state that tolerates a little pain for some perceived gain. In addition, the economics, it seems to me, shows quite clearly that any gain is truly illusory. The pain, however, is not. That I can guarantee you.
to a 2000 study that concluded every job created by Foxwoods produced roughly 1.8 additional jobs in CT. +1.8 is the net effect, that is, after considering any negative impact the casino may have had on businesses in its vicinity. The study concluded that the local economy around the casino was significantly better off than it had been pre casino.
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http://ccea.uconn.ed…
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The economics are not illusory. If you truly believe they are you must also believe our governor is a moron for he has been studying this issue for sometime and has decided to move it forward (and endure the wrath of his base thereby burning through significant amounts of political capital). Clearly he sees a tangible benefit. Or maybe you think he’s just in the mood for a good fight.
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I don’t think the poor will spend much time in casinos. They are already tapped out from playing the lottery, which came out with a new $20 scratch ticket today, by the way.
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While I don’t think the Gov is a moron, I do think that highly intelligent people are very capable of making extremely stupid decisions. Often this happens in the face of more, not less, information. There is a great deal of hope here, being driven by a clear need through a minefield. That’s a recipe, methinks, for wishful thinking at the margins.
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Well, now, see that’s your problem… you think that once the poor are ‘tapped out’, they’ll simply stop playing. I wish you were right, but I have fairly conclusive proof that you are not. Sometimes it comes down to a choice between the milk money and a scratch ticket… You think you know which choice gets made, but you’re wrong. You can’t conceive of a mother allowing her children to go hungry so she can gamble, but it’s real. You’re assumption that a rational peerson would choose the milk money is a good one, but not one that holds up in reality. And before you go all practical on me and say it’s only a few: I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s 1,000 people or just one. I would rather nobody gets rich, so long as everybody eats than to see the possibility of a few getting rich while a few get poorer and hungrier. I don’t want it happening at all. Not in the state I love. That includes lottery tickets, dog tracks, casinos… the whole shebang.
You are against any initiative that will harm even one person. See list of qualifying initiatives below.
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You missed the point of my sarcasm. My point was that the forms of gambling that are already either legal or completely accessible to the mother in your example will tease out her addictive behavior. She will not need to find her way to the casino, which will be least accessible option. I know you don’t care, because no one could argue with the premise that a new form of gambling such as a casino or a $20 scratch ticket won’t create at least one new gambling addict, but I do not believe casinos will create a new wave of addicts.
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Pretty much. The prevailing concern in this casino debate is marginal benefit whereas my prevailing concern is definitive harm. It’s a no brainer: definitive pain for possible benefit? Nope. Not for me. Or, forgo the pain and forgo the chance? I got that one covered: it’s a moral AND an economic stand and one that accounts for quality of life issues as well.
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I don’t think I missed the point of your sarcasm at all. I think the cut of your sarcasm and the knife edge of addiction are here scissoring enough to dilute your sarcasm quite dramatically.
BostonBiz –
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A casino is not a tax.
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The alternative to casinos most mentioned is a tax.
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Don’t throw around the ‘T’ word like its dirty when you actually want one.
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Some of the money generated by casinos is likely to be money that would have been spent at casinos in other states. Some of the money generated by casinos might come from people from other states spending in Mass. Right? And sometime people who are not poor go to casinos, right?
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Ok. It’s not a tax. Let’s call it…
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Regressivley-raising-state-revenues-through-probabilistic-distribution-of-funds-weighted-towards-the-lower-part-of the-bell-curve…
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Happy now?