New Orleans Mayor proposes gambling to save city

[MackJr]

Here's the article:
Gambling in New Orleans

Basically, the city is bankrupt and everything's gone, people are leaving and so forth. He's proposing letting casinos go there to bring up tax revenue.

If he pulls this off, he'll be seen as a genius leader who saved his city. If not, then they'll just say that he was over his head.

However, as we saw in the Houston evacuation of Rita, any mayor is over his head, since it's impossible to evacuate a large city in under a week.

 

[diablo]

Sounds good to me... it'll give the people who haven't already lost their homes due to the hurricane the opportunity to lose them at the casino.

 

[penkitten]

cool city or not, a city in a bowl surronded by water is scary especially since katrina blew thru. could it survive twice? would you wanna live there after katrina? is this a waste of tax money?

finding these people other suitable places to live and getting them on their feet seems more positive to me.

however, what do i know?

 

[S-lemond]

wow lol yup time to loose even more money...and with all thats happened, u know that no ones winnign!

 

[cinephile]

Bad idea

Gambling as a way to save New Orleans is just a gimmick.

While it will bring in some money to the city, most of it will be sifened off by large Gaming Companies. Gambling really does not promote long term growth or investment in a community because it dies'nt promote anything of economic value.

 

[Crowes]

still a mod I see, gio boy

 

[Joe The Homophobe]

not only that but isn't new orleans a toxic site now? from what I heard people shouldn't even live there anymore yet a few weeks later the media changed the story.

 

[MackJr]

I think that they should probably rezone parts of the city so that people can't build homes there anymore. They might also want to land-fill the areas that aren't too far below sea-level. That way, hurricane or not, they'll be okay. The main problem is technology can never win against the full brunt of nature over time. Building $100 Billion in dams isn't as good of a solution as just saying, "this area is now for parks and swampland".

I think though, about the toxic waste, they need money to clean it up, so they're relying on the casinos to inject that cash for those efforts.

 

[Page]

Re: Bad idea

Originally posted by cinephile


While it will bring in some money to the city, most of it will be sifened off by large Gaming Companies. Gambling really does not promote long term growth or investment in a community because it dies'nt promote anything of economic value.

A lot of casinos are owned by individual people, not gaming companies. Take Donald trump, for example. His atlantic city casinos are a big piece of his income.


Now, these casinos, if built, are going to make life worse for some people living in poverty, but you must understand that people are going to piss their money away gambling anyway, so it makes sense to build casinos and have a percentage of the house winnings go to the city as tax. That way, everyone wins.

 

[PRMoon]

Gambling is definately a double edged sword for anytown. First off the crime rate in N.O., which is about average for a city of its kind in its enviroment, is going to get substantially higher. Also alot of industries around the state are going to notice a sizeable increase in employee turn over. The poor will lose more money, suicde rates will increase obviously.

Although there will also be substantial positives to go along with the addition of casinos. Typically casinos will sprout additional jobs around the metropolitan area. Tourisim will increase dramatically, and those addtional tourism dollars will aid in multiple city projects as well as drawing in a fair amount of investors who will develop quality housing and the like. Revenue overall for the city will increase with the additon of gambling but you have to think of it as an expanded lottery in which the number of participants and their locations is the main focus.

What really needs to be watched tough is how much of a foothold the casinos get with the government officials of the state. Obviously the casinos pretty much run Nevada, but we're talking about 100 years of gambling and that's also with gambling taking the role as the life blood for the whole state. The tourist level in NO isn't nearly as high as that of Las Vegas, but again there will be a significant spike in that number over the next 20 years or so (if gambling becomes prevalant in the city) and once the revenue starts to come in you'll see the industry heads backing certain government officials depending on their views on helping gambling (Which I dubbed the non consumable narcotic)