Easy Money 0
Taxes are the price of living in a civilized society. State governments have turned to casinos because politicians are too gutless to be honest about taxes, so they resort to trickery:
“Casinos will solve everything,” they say. “Casinos are easy money, not like taxes. Taxes are hard.”
It’s not working out so well. Atlantic City is becoming a wasteland and, increasingly, new casinos, like new sports palaces, don’t live up to developers’ projections. Werner Herzog’s Bear considers why; here’s a bit of the considering:
Casino gambling, like most promises of easy money, is a mug’s game. It’s a mug’s game for the gambler and for the polity. The house always wins; the reverse of that is that, ultimately, the gambler and the polity are always fleeced.
