Gambling is not a productive industry. There is no product. After a person's gone through the gambling experience, their labor and their time spent has not added to the wealth of society. It's just wasted time, so forth. It is a pleasure, like other entertainment, but in that regard, it's an expensive pleasure.

In this sense, it's like other entertainment industries. Yet, 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, "Wellllll, 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.

And when it comes time to tell 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.

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.

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.

I think we can get a consensus over some of these things and then build toward a responsible gambling industry. The industry talks about responsible gamblers. I'm thinking we need a responsible gambling industry and we need to build toward that in our society.

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.

California's not losing that money because their players send their money to Nevada, but we've got to spend our money some place. And we don't manufacture thing in Nevada. And you know what? We don't grow food and there's a lot of food consumed in our casinos.

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. 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.

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 from -- what do we call? 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 -- 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, if they're advertising their product, OK, they're advertising their product. But for the Government to tell us gambling is good, is, I think, a little out of bounds.

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These are terrible messages. These are the message the Albanians learned from living under Communism that, you know, work doesn't mean a damn -- we can never get ahead. And so now they have become free and the first thing they spend money on is phony pyramid schemes. And now their society is falling apart because the schemes fell apart.

Well, their 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, private, 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.

No, the lotteries have not been a good thing for America. But one of the results for Vegas is they've helped gambling spread. And with the spread of gambling,Las Vegas has become legitimized and more people are coming here and feeding our casinos.

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