Originally, Atlantic City was to be the "East Coast" Las Vegas, for gamblers who did not want to travel across the country or wanted to do a weekend trip local. Had Atlantic City been able to maintain a monopoly on East Coast gaming, they would have survived.
Casino gambling does not have the stigma it used to have. It's quite a mainstream thing now. Also, the demographics have changed radically. I remember years ago, the casinos were classier places, where you felt out of place without a sports jacket. Now you got people waddling around with fanny packs, ball caps and discount store clothing. You might as well be at the mall.
For me, the casino is like an adult Disneyland. Especially in Vegas. When my kids were young, I would easily drop a few thousand dollars to take them to Disneyland, only to stand in long lines half the day in the hot sun and be surrounded by thousands of fussing and misbehaving kids.
Now that the kids are grown up, I take that money and go Las Vegas and have a much better time.
I also cite the closing monologue from the movie “Casino”....
The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior’s college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it’s like checkin’ into an airport. And if you order room service, you’re lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it’s all gone. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds.
The Pennsylvania casinos helped seal their doom, but a much larger problem in NJ is the horrible economy. Too many people within driving distance have no more discretionary dollars; this region (and probably California) will be the last to see any economic recovery. The high costs of bloated government workforces (a holdover from when private-sector employers had a lot of jobs here decades ago) and the aging, crumbling infrastructure are real impediments to growth.
NJ continues to bleed jobs and American population (and the corresponding electoral votes).