Let's talk about why every Mets fan should be opposed to a casino in Flushing. It's a bad idea in terms of infrastructure, morally, and financially. It will funnel money to a billionaire at the expense of regular people. A thread. 🧵
The literature is settled. Casinos harm communities. "Casinos could also contribute to the introduction of crime, creation of undesirable businesses (such as pawnshops, payday loans, and check cashing stores), and production of problem gambling" https://www.nature.com/article...
What else? - casinos depress home prices - the jobs they create are primarily low/minimum wage - they increase crime, bankruptcies, traffic https://stoppredatorygambling....
Downtown Flushing and Corona are overwhelmingly working class, immigrant and poor. They will bear the burden of this monstrosity. https://digitalscholarship.unl... https://www.asisonline.org/sec...
This casino plan also involves the alienation of parkland-- meaning, we give it to a bilionaire for free. We lose it forever. https://patch.com/new-york/flu...
The research shows that--- in addition to the negative impact on individuals, e.g. increased bankruptcies, low paying jobs, etc.-- with more gambling everywhere today, "commercial casino expansion is less likely to induce economic growth." https://www.richmondfed.org/pu...
"Economic development is used by the casino industry ... to sell the idea of casino gambling to the citizenry, the degree to which the introduction and growth of commercial casinos in an area leads to increased economic development remains unclear." https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub...
Plenty of people saying “but what about the good parts of the plan?” They should go ahead and build the good parts. You don’t need a casino for housing, a school, restaurants.