程阳：Global gambling revenues top $80 billion(续前)

程阳：2008年度全国彩票销售分析

程阳：2007、2008广西各市GDP与彩票份额

2007年全球GDP达54.35万亿美元

2006、2007年全球彩票销售以及游戏份额

BETTING THE BANK

But the globalization of gambling creates other, less understood economic and political problems. The growth of legalized gambling, combined with the spread of credit cards into the developing world, could lead to massive consumer debt. In Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, credit cards and consumer bank lenders have made aggressive inroads into societies that once operated on a cash-only basis. In Russia, lending to private consumers grew from $1 billion in 2000 to $15 billion four years later.

In societies with little history of credit and weak regulations, this has led to an explosion in personal bankruptcies. Casino gambling could exacerbate these personal bankruptcies, and in these countries—where banks have weaker loan portfolios and less capital—consumer debt could topple financial institutions. In South Korea, for example, after recovering from the financial crisis of the late 1990s, the country deregulated rules on issuing credit cards. Almost immediately, Koreans began overcharging. This consumer debt nearly brought down several financial firms, which had to be bailed out by their creditors, and helped shave Korea’s national economic growth in half in 2003, the height of the bubble. Many Latin American nations have witnessed similar problems with consumer lending. In Venezuela, easier access to personal loans combined with new oil wealth caused consumer spending to nearly double between 2003 and 2005.

Worse, legalized gambling may not help developing economies rise up the value chain. Although casinos create jobs, they do not develop products or enhance skills, except for those of an elite group of managers. John Warren Kindt, a gambling economics expert at the University of Illinois, argues, “The Macao example is a classic example of gambling not creating any product… You can’t gamble your way to prosperity.” Most new casino jobs are positions for relatively low-skilled service workers. “[In] Macao’s labor market, casino openings have created many job opportunities—too many too fast,” says Cathy Hsu, editor of a book on Asia’s casino industry. “Most of these employees will stay as dealers . . . with limited potential for promotion.”

Workers who feel they do not benefit enough from legalized gambling, especially as they witness high rollers descending on their nation, can strike back at a government. For example, though gambling has provided nearly full employment in Macao, 5,000 residents marched there in May of last year, the biggest demonstration since it became part of China in 1999. The protestors charged the government and the private sector with collusion, complained about labor policies, and fought with police, injuring 27 people. They had reason to complain: Statistics show that wage growth in Macao has not kept pace with rapid economic expansion. “The protests completely shocked the government,” says Lo, the expert on Macao’s gambling industry. “The workers’ protests were attributable to the income gap between the rich and the poor.”

The protestors also highlighted another danger of casino economics. “The government is getting richer and richer . . . but where is all the money?” one of the protestors asked. Like oil profits, casino revenues can easily be captured by the state, because legal gambling is generally run by a small number of large companies who pay their taxes directly to the government. As a result, in Macao, protestors accuse the state of becoming too cozy with large gambling businesses, conspiring with them to bring in imported labor.

Similarly, in other countries, legal gambling may reduce low-level money laundering while simultaneously providing cash to just a handful of leaders, creating higher-level financial problems. The University of Illinois’s Kindt notes that Palestinian officials allowed a casino to be built in the town of Jericho in the 1990s. But the casino plowed money—possibly $60 million—straight into Yasir Arafat’s pockets. For years, Arafat refused to reveal these off-the-books funds, even as Jericho residents complained they saw little economic benefits from the casino’s revenues. “You’re infusing cash into Third World economies with no regulation,” says Kindt. “It’s a guarantee of disaster.”

THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

These problems are not irresolvable. Despite the potential negative side effects, legalized gambling can benefit developing nations’ economies and social order. But this requires that governments take an active interest in the gambling industry, not merely assume the creation of casino resorts will deliver broad growth. In the most successful cases, countries legalize gambling but take just enough action to reduce the most harmful effects of betting on their citizens. That could include limiting the introduction of rapid-play machines—terminals played repeatedly and known as the “crack cocaine” of gambling. It could include creating high entrance fees to get into casinos, as Singapore plans to do, to ensure that the poorest citizens cannot gamble excessively. It could include legislating that a percentage of casino profits must be donated to programs to treat compulsive gamblers. It could include requiring that casino resorts designate a certain portion of their land to non-gambling venues, such as museums and theaters.

At the same time, nations successfully introducing legalized gambling can ensure that not only does it not harm average people but also benefits the state. Moving into higher-value jobs is important, but the most immediate threat to growth and political stability in developing nations is unemployment, to which casino jobs provide a ready fix. “It is not just about people manning casino tables,” says Gillian Koh, senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in Singapore. She believes casinos create an economic multiplier: “They will run through a whole gamut of service-related jobs.”

Developing nations with relatively strong governance and legitimate institutions, like Singapore, will adapt more easily. More lawless countries, like Cambodia, could take  decades. But even as they face the hard challenges of cleaning up gambling, they will be boosting tourism and adding tax revenues along the way.

South Africa proves perhaps the ideal example for other nations that are considering legalizing gambling. Unlike Vegas or Monaco, South Africa is a developing country, with all the high crime and corruption of one. But during the past decade, the country has tightened restrictions on money laundering and cracked down on organized crime. Moreover, since 1996, South Africa’s casino industry has directly created at least 16,000 jobs from its casino industry, as well as at least 30,000 jobs in service industries related to casinos. And in a country with a strong labor movement, striking employees recently negotiated a substantial wage increase with a major casino operator. Also, South Africa has implemented some paternalistic measures: prompting casino operators to spend money on social welfare and creating a national board designed to monitor and stop compulsive gambling. As Macao builds up, with cranes filling the skies and the sounds of jackhammers echoing around the clock, the island already resembles the Vegas of the 1970s, when that city, too, built an empire of gambling out of nothing. Back then, Vegas seemed like a sure bet—with almost no competition, it had a near monopoly on legal wagering in the United States. Today, Macao faces a much tougher, vastly more competitive market, and the tycoons building skeletons of lavish gambling temples on the tiny Chinese territory may be taking greater risks than their American counterparts did 30 years ago. But in a more globalized world where small economies have to develop their own niches, Macao may not have a surer bet to make.

Joshua Kurlantzick is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 

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