One way to grow an economy is to take a lot of money from a lot of people and randomly give a little bit of it back. Well, OK. You need to add flashing lights, dorky noises, hot babes in microskirts, and alcoholic beverages. The legislators in Raleigh are well aware of that, and so they legalized table games at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, and that will create 500 jobs. Lest you be so naïve as to suppose the new hires will be working for the mob:
The National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC) put to rest decades-old assumptions about organized crime and its involvement in the gaming industry. As it stated in its 1999 report, “All of the evidence presented to the commission indicates that effective state regulation, coupled with the corporate takeover of much of the industry, has eliminated organized crime from the ownership and operation of casinos.”
The commission did not give the price of that conclusion.
