“Having now been hit by the worst recession in American history and the worst downturn in gaming revenues in Nevada history, we can simply no longer afford to bear the overwhelming share of the burden for running the state.” — MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman. S&G agrees in general principle, if not in the specific instance (another $32 million for the Nevada Gaming Control Board or 0.3% of the industry’s 2009 Nevada gross) in question.
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Actually, it seems completely fitting that the casinos continue to do just that, since they bear the overwhelming share of the responsibility for RUINING the state.
Or perhaps Feldman has forgotten that since 1932, casinos in Nevada have enjoyed preferential state tax treatment, exemption from local property taxes, immunity from the need to comply with labor laws, and have completely owned the puppet government in Carson City. If a company town dies, it’s the fault of the company.
Nevada has had a single industry for 89 years, with the exception of a few gold mines near Elko. Imagine a town that consists of nothing but brothels, like a Mexican border town. Now imagine an outbreak of STDs. That’s Las Vegas–only, the disease is the recession. Of course, the casinos could have survived it, if their reaction hadn’t been to INCREASE the price of everything.
I look forward to, in five years, walking the deserted, windswept Strip as old Keno tickets swirl about my feet, and the howls of coyotes echo off the crumbling towers of City Center.
Ray, in response to your question, while I don’t think that essentially shifting the privilege tax from 6.75% to 6.78% is adding insult to injury, it does seem absurd to keep going to the casino well over and over while letting other industries in the state get off mostly (mining) or completely (everybody else) scot-free when it comes to gross-receipts taxation.
In the case of Nevada and few other states, it has to be kept in mind that the sky’s the limit when it comes to the number of casinos in the state, which rationalizes the low tax rate when compared to states like Missouri where casinos are limited by statute, enabling the state (and the resident casinos) to justify paying much higher levies.
In response to Ray: Just imagine if the billions and billions of dollars that have been spent to build Disneyland in the Desert had been spent to build factories, farms, schools, a decent railway system, or any one of a hundred productive, useful things. Imagine if the TRILLIONS of dollars that the casinos sucked out of people’s pockets had stayed in those pockets instead. Imagine if the people running the casinos had treated Las Vegas as something other than their personal fiefdom. Did you know that until about twenty years ago, most Vegas streets had dirt sidewalks? That there was only one city park of any size? That there were exactly SEVEN city bus routes? But the casinos FIERCELY resisted any kind of taxation that would pay for a decent infrastructure. To them, the ideal Vegas was a series of concentric circles of shoddy, temporary housing, with bus lines running up and down the spokes, to carry the casino workers back and forth.
So it isn’t exactly surprising, given that the current gang of thieves has essentially the same mentality, that they resist paying taxes to help clean up the social disaster that they have caused. And no, I’m not against casinos, or “vice”, as you assume. I’m against the lethal combination of power, greed, and stupidity that has been the very definition of the Nevada casino industry, ever since it was misborn.