With G20 having rolled through the city, all kinds of talk went around about why the G20 was invited to the city in the first place. I though probably because it's really close to Nemacolin. The official words from President Obama went something like "Blah blah blah revitalization blah blah."
That's a word that's been flying around a lot when Pittsburgh comes up. Some people rave about it, claiming that Pittsburgh is undergoing some sort of rust-belt renaissance, while others are more skeptical.
Regardless of whether you think things are going up, down, around, upside-down, or a mysterious as-yet-undefined direction called only "Dennis" by theoretical physicists, I can tell you one thing that won't "revitalize" Pittsburgh. And I'm going to explain why you should be aghast, offended, and outraged that it's even present. Because you as a Pittsburgher were not ever consulted before your city was violated.
I'm talking about something that probably doesn't even cross your mind on a regular basis, but it represents a big pile of wrongness festering in neon splendor on the north shore of the Ohio river. A wound into which money falls and never truly returns, inflicted by the "you pat my back and I'll pat yours" connections that city government has with anyone who has a significant amount of money. The economic welfare of some of the people of our city was sold to Don Barden and Neil Bluhm in order to finance a new arena and provide projected tax revenue.
At face value, at least the tax revenue idea doesn't seem so bad, but if you look at what people at different income levels spend on gambling, it's effectively a voluntary and highly regressive tax. That is to say, low- and middle-income people spend much more on gambling as a percentage of income than the rich do. So money that would otherwise be spent on something useful, or at least some sort of manufactured product (which inevitably will employ more people than casino operation), is thrown down into a hole where it ends up mostly in the hands of a few wealthy individuals (after all, casinos are guaranteed profits) and the county.
This issue is compounded by the fact that many casino patrons are elderly folks who are on incomes provided by Social Security. That means there are people using money that you paid in the form of taxes to the federal government, and it is eventually ending up going into machines that are programmed not to give it back. There is a certain amount of time you spend at work because old people want to sit in front of machines and fart on stools while effectively lighting dollar bills on fire, in the name of "entertainment."
"Programmed not to give it back?" Of course! Gambling is, by nature of what it is, a zero-sum game at best. As soon as cost of equipment, licensing, and maintenance of the system is added to that model, it becomes a negative-sum game. That is, if you play enough it is inevitable that you will put more money into it than you got out. You are guaranteed to lose a majority of the time. Make it a for-profit business and you just make it even less likely that your patrons will go home any richer than they arrived. The highly addictive nature of gambling just makes it even worse: People rarely quit while they're ahead.
What does this mean? Think about this: If 500 people go, spend an average of $20 and get an average of $5 back, that is $7500 daily that is taken out of the local economy (except a pittance paid to casino staff. You know Barden and Bluhm aren't spending it here, they're investing it in their next big scam [that is, aside from the money going to the new Penguins arena.]) Yearly, that is almost 2.75 million dollars that will never see the light of day in Pittsburgh again. And I'm sure that's a conservative estimate. Then we could even talk about the additional law enforcement attention that casinos require, and the crime that frequently surrounds them, in terms of economic cost. Crime and enforcement are both expensive.
So my point is that if the powers that be in Pittsburgh really cared about its revitalization, they might have exercised some restraint in deciding whether to put a casino here. I just hope the people will exercise some restraint in terms of how much money they sink into false hope and golden dreams. Or maybe casino proceeds can be used entirely to fund healthcare for the old people who spend their money there. As long as there's someone with no interest in the welfare of our city running it, the casino is just a bleeding sore on the north shore. (See? Lookit, I rhymed!)
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