One fringe benefit of New Jersey’s government shut down is that fewer people will lose less money in bad bets in Atlantic City and on the lottery.
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July 5th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Aren’t those revenue generators for the state?
Isn’t their shutdown only going to aggravate the fiscal problems?
July 5th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
why the moral indignation jeff? coming from one of the founders of Entertainment Weekly, your swipe at gaming entertainment feels a little, well, gratuitous.
any case, what makes one form of entertainment moral and another immoral (assuming no humans and animals are harmed)? what makes casino and lottery a “bad bet” in your words? or a worse bet than any other entertainment purchase? Is spending $10 on a movie ticket really somehow morally or ethically superior to buying a $10 lottery ticket?
worst, people who rail against gambling strike me as waging thinly-veiled class war — that is, somehow spending $200 on a broadway show (2-3 hours of entertainment) is OK — presumably because its highbrow — but spending the same $200 on 2-3 hours of slot machine entertainment is, what, ugly? declasse?
and please dont complain that gambling is addicting — so is candy and i dont see you railing against that — or that casino and lottery odds are tilted against the player (versus natural math.) duh. of course that is so — thats’ the markup, the way the casino makes money, same way this blog’s ad network charges more for an ad placement than it actually costs to execute the placement…
July 5th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
No one seems to be lamenting the fact that people in NJ will not have essential services….the media only focuses on the plight of the casinos.
July 5th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Larry,
To be fair, the casinos employ tens of thousands of workers, many of whom are going to lose their jobs if the budget stalemate continues. While emergency services are allowed to keep operating and State employees are in no danger of job loss (or even lost wages in most cases), every day the casinos aren’t open means missed car payments, defaulted mortgages, and who knows what else for the people who bust their butts to keep Atlantic City running during the summer season with little if any economic safety net. So while the focus might be a little skewed, more than a passing interest in the fate of the casinos and the money and jobs they generate is entirely justifiable.