{"id":1460,"date":"2009-12-02T11:53:52","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T19:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=1460"},"modified":"2010-12-30T10:15:17","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T18:15:17","slug":"we-are-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/we-are-dubai\/","title":{"rendered":"We *are* Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"

“If anywhere is emblematic of the debt-fuelled extravagance of the past decade, it is surely [X], which strove to have the tallest, the biggest and the best of everything<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

They’ve just got to be talking about Las Vegas<\/strong>, right?<\/p>\n

\"Burj<\/p>\n

No, it’s Dubai<\/strong><\/a>. This is its very own version<\/a> of CityCenter<\/strong> — Burj Dubai<\/strong> — one final reach for the sky before the emirate’s deranged construction boom goes into hibernation, the proverbial house built on sand<\/a>. (Heck, Vegas almost got its own version in the form of the Burj Dubai-inspired Crown Las Vegas<\/strong>, one of many James Packer<\/strong>-backed ventures that came to naught.)<\/p>\n

The resemblances don’t end there. The companies of which Dubai World might have to divest to stay upright including some awfully familiar Strip names<\/a> — like MGM Mirage<\/strong>, Barneys<\/strong>, Cirque du Soleil<\/strong> and Deutsche Bank<\/strong>. In fact, if you look at this photo timeline (“The City on Crack<\/a>“), what does the accelerated evolution of the Dubai shoreline look like? The Las Vegas Strip<\/strong>, that’s what.<\/p>\n

Going further, Dubai’s post-1998 growth model sounds suspiciously like a coked-up version of what was to happen on the Strip just a few years later. Hmmmm …<\/em><\/p>\n

\"dubai_161981s\"Whatever gave Boyd Gaming<\/strong>, Cosmopolitan<\/strong>, Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong>, Fontainebleau<\/strong>, El Ad Properties<\/strong>, Triple Five<\/strong>, Morgans Hotel Group<\/strong>, MGM Mirage, Crown Ltd<\/strong>., Sol Kerzner<\/strong>, Colony Capital<\/strong>, Columbia Sussex<\/strong> and Station Casinos<\/strong> the cockamamie notion they could all<\/em> build multi-billion-dollar resorts simultaneously (to say nothing of the 70-100 projected condo towers they and other developers were projecting) and it would be nothing but an economic boon? Could the execs in question have been taking their cues from … Dubai<\/em>?<\/p>\n

After all, both destinations<\/strong> were metamorphosing into getaways for the filthy rich, growing on borrowed money and a vast supply of emigr\u00e9 labor. Vegas offered low taxes, Dubai proffered no<\/em> taxes.\u00a0 Plus valet parking<\/a>. Dubai was even viewed as an islet of comparative libertarianism — provided you didn’t have sex in public, in which case you could forget about due process<\/a>. Sort of like being an advantage player back here.<\/p>\n

So Dubai is literally crumbling back into the ocean from which much of its acreage was stolen. Its unsustainable growth, preposterous architecture<\/a> and general aura of fantasy run amok stand as an expensive cautionary tale. Its debt-repayment schedules<\/a> make those of Harrah’s and MGM seem a walk in the park. The current state of affairs in Dubai, though, looks uncomfortably like present-day Vegas writ large<\/a>. So the next time we feel the urge to follow a bunch of decadent petrocrats off the deep end — in the immortal words of Nancy Reagan<\/strong> — just say, “No.”<\/p>\n

The dark side of Let’s Make Deal<\/em><\/strong>. Hey, there’s a dark side to everything, man. Getting on the Tropicana<\/strong>-hosted show is easy. Getting paid<\/a> … not so much.<\/p>\n

\"SteveWith all due respect<\/strong> to casino mogul and creative mastermind Steve Wynn<\/strong> (left<\/em>), on the subject of high taxes, he needs to STFU stat. A new study<\/a> by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy<\/strong> shows that Wynn’s comfortable Nevada lifestyle is bankrolled by — not to put too fine a point on it — his employees and those of his casino confreres<\/em>. Your minimum-wage workers, those bringing in $21K\/year or less, see\u00a0 9% of their income sucked up by taxes. Those of us in the $34K-$53K bracket (i.e., still making less than a Wynn Resorts<\/strong> pit boss) are forking over 6%-plus. But somebody like Sheldon Adelson<\/strong>‘s Two Million Dollar Man, Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> President Michael Leven<\/strong>, pays but 1.6%.<\/p>\n

This, of course, is the legacy of a revenue system one of whose two primary pillars (the other being gaming revenue) is sales taxes. And when the preponderance of your tax burden falls on those with the least discretionary income and Nevada retail sales are on a two-year-plus slide, is it any wonder that the Silver State scarcely has a pair of wooden nickels to rub together?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“If anywhere is emblematic of the debt-fuelled extravagance of the past decade, it is surely [X], which strove to have the tallest, the biggest and the best of everything.” They’ve just got to be talking about Las Vegas, right? No, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[48,65,60,80,56,3,15,66,28,134,14,4,7,22,96,11,102,124,12,57,32,31,9,19,17,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5480,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/5480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}