And this has changed Las Vegas, from being a renegade city with a renegade industry, into being a world center or a world industry. And a legitimate industry -- the gaming industry.

It is an entertainment that has some very high costs for some people. The externalities are much higher in the gaming industry-- we're talking about compulsive gambling and the crime that's associated -- much higher with gambling entertainment than with other sources of entertainment.

So, there are costs attended to it. Also, it is a diversion from time. Time that could be more usefully, usefully spent. So, for the nation as a whole, I don't think it's positive. If we have more and more gambling, but perhaps we don't have too much at the moment. It's not destructive of society, yet.

Also, politicians are greedy for what they consider to be free money. They consider gambling tax like money falling off of trees. Well, it's not. It's money that comes out of people's pockets. But the politicians say, "This money is acceptable money. Whereas money that we get from a direct tax in terms of sales or property tax or income tax, that kind of money is not acceptable to the public." So, the politicians like it.

And then the general public. They're more familiar with it, so they enjoy it. And they're sold the proposition -- it's gambling or taxes -- and they say, "Welllllllll, yeah, let's take the gambling. Let's not, not take the higher taxes." But as more people participate, there is a feeling of comfort with gambling.

Also, compared to other sins, my goodness, we have sins in our society -- gambling's one of the smaller sins today. And so, you get in this notion of it's, well, it's a victimless crime. Let people do it on their own. It's other people's business. I think also, as a society, we're very reluctant to get involved in other people's morality.

You get libertarians say that people should be free to gamble. You get people on the far right saying businesses should be free to make profits. Then you get people on both sides of the political spectrum, saying gambling's wrong.

And when it comes time to talking to friends. They'll say, "What about gambling?" And they'll say, "Oh, I went to Vegas and I hit a $5000 jackpot." Not, "I went to Vegas and I was out there for three days. I was up and down and I lost $500."

And we want people, when they leave town, to feel good about themselves. So, even if they're losing all their money, we want them to remember the lens, and to think of all the bargains and all the things they saw for free and the fun they had in Las Vegas. And then, by word of mouth, Vegas is a positive experience, repeated over and over again.

So, as long as people come occasionally, it's not bad for them. It's good recreation for them, where it's occasional.

The whole industry falls apart if people think the games are rigged or they're dishonest or one person has a better chance than another person. Everybody knows the games are chance games, and that there are winners and losers and they know the chances and the odds favor the casino by a small margin. People will not come here to gamble in a dishonest industry.

Then there is no state government regulation in California. It's a formula for disaster. And, it's certainly a type of gaming that cannot, possibly attract tourism. So, you know all the gambling is done by the local people, so there can be no economic gain for communities with unregulated card rooms.

There is no economic benefit for society. The jobs that are produced are taken away from people -- it's money that's taken away from people that live close by. Other businesses in the area, lose jobs. So, there's no positive growth.

And with it being unregulated, the chance of dishonesty is extremely high, extremely high.

Everything sleazy in gambling is happening in the card rooms. There's lots of loose money. There's cheating at the games. It's unregulated. There are players that are in collusion with dealers, with themselves against other players at the table. When the money's won, it's loose money. It's held. There are drug deals on the floor. There's prostitution rampant in many of the card rooms. There is just no security force that is concerned about these things.

The security in the casino is, to make sure, probably, there isn't a murderer on the floor. That maybe if someone wins, they can get to their car without being mugged. But also, is to guarantee that the people sitting at the tables are paying their charge per minute or half hour or per hand -- however the seating charge is assessed. And to make sure that the money that goes to the cage of the casino is secure and is protected.

Now, this isn't in all the card rooms. But this is the major card rooms, the big ones. The ones that are making lots of money for these little communities.

Why would they have to go along with IRS money cash transfer regulations, if there is no one there watching? Watching this? I'm saying, there is no incentive for the owners to play, to play by the book, because there is no book -- other than, keep busy and take your cut.

Now, I think we need -- I agree that we need a federal study of gambling. But, maybe, the Bicycle Club's and the U.S. Marshal Service is the first thing that should be studied by the Gambling Study Commission.

And they were probably influencing the legislation so there wouldn't be regulation of the card clubs in California. It is phenomenal that the federal government, an entity of the Federal Government, is giving campaign money to anybody. I mean, one of the questions is -- was that the Clinton White house or the Bush White House. They gave it to both sides.

New York's going to be softening up toward casino proposition over the next year or two. Then other places in the United States will also. And Ohio, had this proposition, we need a casino because Windsor has one. It wasn't the same thing. But now, Ohio is going to say, "We need a casino because Windsor has one." It wasn't the same thing. But now, Ohio is going to say, "We need a casino because Detroit has three casinos." And the people in Toledo are going to listen. And if New York has a casino, the people in Pennsylvania are going to listen.

And, the thing could be spreading. I don't think the formula favors the opposition at the moment. It's still going to be difficult to pass a casino proposition.

Well, those aren't necessarily true, true results of gambling. I think the national study commission, if it's done fairly -- and the Gaming Commission's going to be well represented on it -- can show that gambling works some places, doesn't work other places, and it can be a guideline for some standards for how casinos are established.

I think we need some federal standards, and maybe even some legislation about campaign contributions from the gaming industry. They, certainly, should be under the same rules that contributors are for federal elections.

We're going to have a society that is not going to be a healthy society. So, I think the onus is on the industry to put on some restraints. The onus is on the industry to tell the government, look, we need some limits and where are they?

And, also, it would be healthy for the casino industry to not have gambling everywhere, to have selected resort centers. Of course, we're one of them, here in Nevada. But there could be other centers like this in the United States. They can have the same kind of economic growth that we have, but there can't be 50 centers like this. We can't have one within an hour's drive of everybody.

Yes, the National Gaming Study Commission is going to begin operations within, oh, probably a week's or within a month they'll be actually getting into their studies.

If the Gaming Commission decides there's nothing wrong with gambling that a few little things can't fix or let's be concerned about compulsive gambling. Let's put 1-800 numbers on the slot machines. If that's all the further they're going to go, they might as well pack up their work right now. It will have been a failure and it will result in the industry covering up the problems of gambling.

The problems of gambling are economic flows...is gambling good for different communities? And it's my position it's good for some and it's bad for others. But we've got to know what the costs are. We have to honest input/output analyses of the economic flows of gambling. We have to honest studies of crime and gambling -- honest studies of the prevalence of compulsive gambling, the costs of compulsive gambling.

If we have these studies, maybe we can build toward a consensus on what the limits in gambling should be. I think we can get a consensus we not have Internet gambling. I think we can get a consensus we not have gambling in televisions in people's homes or through telephone lines. Probably we could get a consensus that slot machines not be located in taverns, in every tavern in America. And, maybe, we can get a consensus that lotteries should not sell tickets to children. And that, maybe, they shouldn't be pumping out advertisements, constantly, saying gambling is good and it's wonderful. You know? Gamble and help Johnny read, things like that.

Before 1988, it was really a two-state industry. It really was. 1988, 1989 were the breakthrough years. In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory act that changed Indian gaming from Bingo to casino gaming -- that wasn't the intent of the Congressman, Senator from Nevada wrote the law thinking he was stopping Indian gaming, changed from bingo to casinos. And that was also the year that the South Dakota voters voted for casinos.

And then, in 1989, the legislature in Iowa said river boats and, pretty soon, we have eleven states with commercial gaming. 20 states with Native American casino gambling and it's all across America. A majority of the people live in states that have casino gambling.

But it even goes beyond that. It's people like the citizens of Nevada that don't want to raise taxes to pay for public services. They say, well, let the casinos do it. Or, we've got the casinos now negotiating with the legislatures about who is going to pay for the new roads and schools we need. And they say, well, let's raise room taxes on tourists and let's raise sales tax because sales tax -- the tourists pay most of that. And everybody says, "Ah, what a happy solution."

It's just a shirking of responsibility, this notion that we can get something for nothing, something for free that gambling money is money falling off trees. Money comes out of people's pockets. And gambling is just a shifting of money around. And it's very important for us to know that and to know what kind of pockets the money comes out of.

I think for our casinos on the strip, we don't have a problem. It's tourist money and it's affluent people. But when we go into the bars of Las Vegas and the grocery store, we find poorer people, that are local residents gambling and they have problems. They have a sickness with the gambling. And we don't realize that. We just sort of close our eyes to the fact there's a problem and when you look around America, much of the gambling is local gambling like we have in our supermarkets, it's not positive at all and it doesn't help society.

Gambling, itself, can be positive or negative. But when it's local people, when it's poor people, when it's people that can't afford it, when it's people that are habitual gamblers it's very, very bad for society.

We take the money from the casinos, we ship a large amount of it back to California to purchase food and to purchase other supplies. We purchase about 90% of the goods we buy in Nevada through California.

And so, California, when you consider all of the flows of the money, they come out, they come out OK. They don't really lose on the proposition. And, they don't have the regulatory costs of gaming. Nor do they have the social costs that go along with our gambling. And they have fewer people that are habitual gamblers because they don't have the casino gambling as readily available in California as we do here.

Actually, we spin it through our economy, once. We have it one of the lowest multipliers because the money won't spend several times here. It will spin through once and, boom, it's out of state -- 90% of it back toward California.

So, California isn't hurt by us having gambling. They might be helped because we draw -- we draw in people that want to come to the Grand Canyon. They come to Vegas but they also want to do Disneyland. By having Vegas here, we add to the collective draw of this region -- that does not hurt California.

They will lose money to their state capital city that they didn't lose before. And, then, there's suppliers. Every casino needs a slot machine and guess where they're made? They're made right here.

You know, California has a casino, they're still going to be shipping money to Nevada. Now, it's to be purchasing slot machines. Now, the money is shipped over here because the owners of the casinos live here. It's a different formula -- but the flow, you have to look at the flow without casinos, with casinos and recognize that, when you have casinos, your people are going to be gambling a lot more than they are now.

... more people play more. All sectors of society play the lottery, but there's a disproportionate play among poorer people. Secondly, lotteries just extract money from the local community. There is no influx of outside money for the lotteries. Beyond that, the states extract an extremely high tax.

If you consider that a lottery ticket costs $1, well, you put 50% you put 50 cents into a pool and redistribute the 50 cents, and it costs you a dollar for the ticket. Well, you bought something that's valued at 50 cents. You just paid a 100% sales tax. That's an extremely high tax. And it's an extremely high take-out for a gambling organization. It's one of the worst bet in our society -- worst bets that we have in our society, with a 100% take-out, or a 100% surcharge on the cost of gambling.

So, it's not a good bet, it's extracted from the community. States lose money on the deal because the supply companies are expensive. Usually, oh, 5% or so of the lottery costs go to a supplier. So the State actually loses money on the deal. But, the State government picks up a lot of money.

And -- but I don't think they realize what the options are, if people had the money in their pockets and they were spending it on consumer goods. First of all, society would be more wealthy, because at the end of the purchase there would be a consumer good. And the State would also pick up a sales tax on that consumer good.

Poor people playing the lottery in Georgia are shifting money to middle class kids going to the University of Georgia. Is this the way we tax public services? Take from the poor, give to the middle class and the wealthy people? That everybody that earns a B average gets a free college education at the University of Georgia. Are these poor kids? Or are these middle class kids?

It's a -- it's sort of a tax .... Welfare for the middle class and the rich paid, for by the poor. The lottery ticket is a bad mechanism for redistributing goods and services in society.

Also, casinos can be restricted such, that the motif of casino gambling attracts money from middle class and upper middle class people. It doesn't disproportionately attract money from the poor.

The lottery disproportionately attracts money from poor, attracts from local residents. There's no economic gain with the lottery. And it's Government run and it's almost like the Government putting campaign money into an election in California. The Government is telling people to gamble and it's good. And I think it's much better to have free enterprise situation, have the private competitors.

And I'm thinking, it's one thing for private money to push it -- and we have lots of problems with that. But it's quite another for our government to be pushing government on ourselves. I think it's completely out of bounds and out of the role that is assigned to government.

Well, their [Albania] government promoted the pyramid schemes. They get the result. And that's going to be the result in America if our government is promoting gambling.

With private enterprise,competitive enterprise, you get checks on these promotions. And you won't have the false promotion of this is the way to raise your child. You will educate your child by coming to Vegas. Wouldn't that be a great ad? "Come to Vegas and Educate Your Child!" I don't think so. I don't think so. We would laugh if we saw ads like this and laugh at the people making the ads.

It's almost like the church Bingo game. You know? Raise money for the churches, except the church Bingo games didn't go on radio and television and advertise. They didn't put, you know, "Give every agent 5% for selling Bingo cards." They sort of kept it in the church. And they kept the profits in the church. They didn't go into some state treasury, where politicians could do all sorts of funny things with the money.

web site copyright WGBH educational foundation