The Luck Business: The Devastating Consequences and Broken Promises of America's Gambling Explosion.

• Author: Shenk, Joshua Wolf
• Position: Review

The Luck Business: The Devastating Consequences and Broken Promises of America's Gambling Explosion

Robert Goodman Free Press, $23

The "nice" side of town in Atlantic City is a stretch one block wide and less than 10 blocks long. This is what tourists see: velvet-soaked casinos, a Boardwalk lined with shops and concession stands, faux-everything. The rest of the city is a ghetto--cracked concrete coated with broken bottles and refuse. With the exception of pawn shops, which are plentiful, storefronts are mostly boarded up.

Casinos were supposed to revive this faded resort town. Instead, they hastened its decline. Rather than acting like a sponge soaking up visitors' money, as in Las Vegas, Atlantic City's casinos became more like rats, gnawing away at the remains of small restaurants and hotels. Out-of-state magnates like Donald Trump built self-enclosed fortresses along the beach. Jobs went to out-of-staters, and the problems of gambling addicts and increased crime stayed right at home.

You might expect this story to serve as a cautionary tale for towns attracted to the flashing lights of slot machines. Instead, casinos are enjoying unprecedented popularity among politicians and urban planners. Cities in rural South Dakota and Colorado mining country, in Louisiana and dozens of other states, have turned to gambling for a jolt of economic energy. They keep chasing the dream of Las Vegas, only to find themselves in the nightmare of Atlantic City. The big-spending tourists rarely come. Little new money enters the economy. The money that is spent is diverted from other area businesses.

Why do so many towns--from New Orleans to Joliet, Illinois to Davenport, Iowa--keep falling into the gambling trap? As Robert Goodman explains in The Luck Business, it's not because citizens are clamoring for more opportunities to gamble. In fact, every state-wide referendum to expand gambling since New Jersey's in 1976 has failed. The casino boosters are the industry itself and its eager followers--politicians seeking quick-fixes for deep-seated economic woes (and, sometimes, campaign contributions as well).

The pattern is depressingly familiar. It starts with vast promises: "This may be as important to Davenport as the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta," one Iowa official said of Davenport's first casino license. "Riverboat gambling will start a rebirth of Joliet's center," predicted that Illinois town's city manager in 1992. "It will save us five years in...