I have a modest proposal. We all know that Chicago is desperate for jobs. And everybody, from the mayor on down, seems to believe that a unique attraction could induce more tourists to spend their money here, boosting employment and tax revenue.
Mind-altering drugs–I prefer to think of them as ingested entertainment–are a major market with obvious appeal to millions of Americans, not to mention many foreign tourists, but only in this Pleasure Dome will they be able to enjoy these delights in relaxed safety. The appeal is obvious and enormous.
Finally, to those who object, I simply ask: What alternative plan do you offer? Gambling?
Never mind that this “free money” amounted to the most regressive way of taxing people; poor and average working people didn’t complain because they were blinded by desperate dreams of escape from life’s treadmill. With median family income stagnant since the early 70s, and inequality on the rise during the 80s in what even before was the most inegalitarian major industrial society, more and more Americans saw the route to the American dream not through hard work but a lotto ticket.
With the federal government leading the way (and cutting its financial aid to states and cities), governments at all levels either gave up or were unable to sustain public strategies for economic development beyond begging and bribing private business. Communities were left blowing in the laissez-faire winds, and a tornado from 1970 to 1990 blew away about 400,000 of Chicago’s million manufacturing jobs.
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The three developers–Caesars World, Inc., Circus Circus Enterprises, Inc., and Hilton Hotels Corporation–propose a $2 billion complex of four huge casinos with hotels and a family-oriented entertainment and shopping center. It would occupy roughly 100 acres of land close to downtown, nearly half of which could be taken up with parking facilities. They claim, in a study commissioned by them from Arthur Andersen & Company, that this complex would lure 10 million new visitors a year (in addition to the 16 million who now come to Chicago), create 66,000 jobs (about 18,000 at the site itself), and produce more than $625 to $640 million a year in taxes after the casinos stabilize in a few years.
Another accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche, prepared a less rosy study for the city. This study projected 2.9 million new visitors, 38,000 jobs (about 13,000 at the site), and about $500 to $680 million in annual tax revenue by the year 2000.
