Impetus: MGM Resorts pitches a $1 billion dollar proposed casino and entertainment complex for the city of Atlanta.
Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want an MGM casino in my city, much less any casino at all.
The thing is, I do like casinos and gambling, but frankly, I don’t want either to be so readily available basically in my own backyard. Frankly, I like the idea of escaping to Las Vegas for a couple days, where I can gamble to my heart’s content, eat like a ravenous glutton, drink like a fish, but then leave it all behind when I hop on a plane and leave.
Having an MGM Grand Atlanta would mean that if I ever had the temptation to play some blackjack or craps, there would be no want for a trip to Vegas or anywhere else that has decent, reputable gaming, I could just head over to the local casino, and inevitably lose, since as the old adage goes, the house always wins in the end.
Furthermore, I just don’t agree with the rose-colored imagery that businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians seem to think they can pawn off onto the pleebs. Much like the bullshit stadiums being erected in the metro area that are costing billions, a casino won’t be much of an improvement to the short-term, or long-term benefits to the city. I fail to see where the alleged 3,500 jobs that would be created, most of which will be fairly blue-collar, unglamorous and very low-paying can warrant the necessity to spend a billion dollars in order to build.
Not to mention the obvious increase of riff-raff that would inevitably happen if a casino were dropped into the city limits; it’s like Atlanta already has enough crime problems of its own, building a casino to extrapolate it doesn’t necessarily sound like a very good idea. Frankly, the only idea that I’d think is worth exploring is when the Braves vacate Turner Field, use that land to make this mythical casino; the crime rate is already absurdly high around there already, why not have a casino there to at least warrant it?
Ultimately, someone I don’t know said it best on the Facebook thread where I found out about this news in the first place: casinos tend to take a lot more from the communities they are placed in than they have a tendency to give back. Not only do I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly, this is also how I feel about the bullshit new stadiums being built for the Braves and Falcons.
On a long enough time line, sure, a casino or sporting venues will make back their investments. But by the time they do, the people are already jaded, won’t really see the long term payoffs, and it doesn’t really feel like much of a victory for those forced to endure them. All the while, those investors, politicians, and those on the inside operations of these scams, are cashing in from day one, laughing all the way to the banks, over and over again.
Another perspective of mine for why I’m very much against the idea of an MGM Grand Atlanta, is basically the fact that there’s an MGM Grand Detroit, and if there’s every a city that all other major cities should strive to not be like, it’s most certainly Detroit. It’s bad enough that when I visited Detroit, I’m eerily reminded of how it feels a lot like Atlanta, from the demographic, sprawl, and all the way to the fact that it too is reliant on I-75, I don’t really need or want Atlanta to also end up with an MGM Grand, so that it can provide one more parallel, en route to inevitably city-wide bankruptcy, just like Detroit.
