Unless you majored in economics, you'll have a hard time defending that assertion.
Any trade increases wealth for both participants- in this case, trading your money to the casino in return for the excitement/opportunity of playing the game.
If you had read carefully what I wrote, you would have noted that I said TOTAL wealth. That isn't limited to the just participants in a particular transaction.
Now, if you're saying that the cost to society of casinos is higher than the benefits, that's an empirical question.
Duh. And your analysis sucks.
How much does a casino cost in terms of fire prevention, police, etc. vs. how much does it pump into the local economy through the significant number of low-wage jobs, taxes paid, and so forth.
Once again, you isolate the question to the lone transaction and not its downstream consequences: loan sharking, the criminal enforcement that comes with it, the psychologists and counselors, the battered and neglected kids, welfare bureaucrats, bankruptcy judges... the demand for all of those professions would be less without gambling. Those people would end up making other carreer choices that usually end up producing something instead of patching up destructive behavior.
A society does not get richer by gambling because the activity does less that increases the productivity of the transactants (as many forms of entertainment do) while it has many side effects that markedly lower productivity. Society ends up spending more than the taxes raised for social services the demand for which is abetted by gambling. It's a bad deal for society, but a great deal for bureaucrats, social service professionals, and those only capable of holding low paying service jobs.
Don't forget that most casinos also are significant consumers of foodstuffs and other consumable items.
Now that's a great point. How much more healthy food are people consuming because they are gambling?
And don't confuse the relatively untouchable Indian casinos with the Nevada casinos- they're separate problems.
At least now you are calling them problems.
Look, all I was saying is that, with increasing competition in the gambling market, Las Vegas will not be as profitable as it was. As with any service, rapidly increasing the supply of casinos will force the price they can charge to drop. Fewer Californians will be going Las Vegas to spend their money. That means less revenue for Nevada than there would otherwise have been.
Do you dispute that?
Poppycock. Carry_Okie is right.
Trade doesn't increase wealth whatsoever, it merely transfers wealth.
Wealth is created only by engaging in value-added activities. By the same token, Service sector activities do not create wealth, they merely transfer, redistribute and eventually dissipate wealth as consumption. Thus, as value-added activities move offshore and the U.S. labor force shifts to the Service Sector, wealth is dissipated, not created. And the U.S. standard of living declines as a result.WEALTH: The net ownership of material possessions and productive resources. In other words, the difference between physical and financial assets that you own and the liabilities that you owe. Wealth includes all of the tangible consumer stuff that you possess, like cars, houses, clothes, jewelry, etc.; any financial assets, like stocks, bonds, bank accounts, that you lay claim to; and your ownership of resources, including labor, capital, and natural resources. Of course, you must deduct any debts you owe.
VALUE ADDED: The increase in the value of a good at each stage of the production process. The value that's being increased is specifically the ability of a good to satisfy wants and needs either directly as a consumption good or indirectly as a capital good. A good that provides greater satisfaction has greater value. In essence, the whole purpose of production is to transform raw materials and natural resources that have relatively little value into goods and services that have greater value.
SERVICE: An activity that provides direct satisfaction of wants and needs without the production of a tangible product or good. Examples include information, entertainment, and education. This term good should be contrasted with the term good, which involves the satisfaction of wants and needs with tangible items. You're likely to see the plural combination of these two into a single phrase, "goods and services," to indicate the wide assortment of economic production from the economy's scarce resources.