Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas If youre dumping money into gambling or slot machines youre not spending money on cars refrigerators computers education. The lost consumer spending is enormous. The lost sales tax revenue - enormous. And when you start losing the economy you want to go back to basics you dont want to keep going down the wrong path said professor John Warren Kindt.
A gambling ban leads people to spend more money on consumer goods and services which would lead to the creation of more jobs supplying those goods and services which would lead to still more spending by the people with the new jobs Kindt said.
In studies it shows that around these slot machine areas we have people spending even 10 less on food said John Warren Kindt a professor of business and public policy at the Urbana-Champaign campus.
Internet gambling is the very worst form of gambling because it puts electronic gambling at every school desk every work desk and in every living room said Kindt who edited a 3000 page report
Gambling with Crime Destabilized Economies & Financial Systems.
Illinois took in more than $1.3 billion in casino tax and lottery revenue in 2008. But Kindt said that for every $1 gambling brings in to Illinois the state ends up paying $3 in additional costs due to higher crime broken families and increased poverty.
With unemployment in Illinois hovering around 9 and the state facing an estimated $12.4 billion budget deficit the easiest way to fix the Illinois
economy is to ban gambling statewide a University of Illinois professor told state lawmakers Tuesday.
State Senate President John J. Cullerton a Chicago Democrat has said he wants to fund a statewide road and transit construction program by allowing Illinoisans to buy lottery tickets and bet on horse races over the Internet.
You can create jobs if you legalize illegal drugs. You can create tax revenues if you legalize illegal drugs Kindt said rejecting the idea of expanding gambling to pay for new roads.
However the prospects lawmakers will embrace a total gambling ban are very slight. In 2005 the Illinois House voted to outlaw riverboat gambling but the proposal went nowhere in the Illinois Senate.
