The IRS doesn’t have any problem quantifying wealth creation in the entertainment industry.

Wht is gambling is less moral than most TV shows?

One can not make people good by using the threat of force, ban betting and you drive it into back rooms (where wages and conditions for staff will be worse).

It is like the drug laws. Using drugs is a very bad idea, but laws against drug use do not prevent drug use – they create a vast web of corruption that reaches all over society (from the highest to the lowest).

Millions of people (mostly the poor – the wealthy tend to get off) are sent to prison due to the “war on drugs” whilst drugs continue to be on sale in every city and town.

The law is reduced to an absurdity – and all so “moralists” can have a warm fuzzy feeling that they are “doing something”.

The lessons of prohibition have still not been learned (and at least prohibition was supported by a Constitutional Amendment [the 18th - repealed in 1933] the war on drugs is an unconstitutional exercise in arbitary power).

A crime is a violation of another person’s (or oranization’s) body or goods – it is not doing something stupid to oneself (whether that is drinking booze, placing a bet, using drugs, or jumping off a cliff).

I do not deny that there are such things as sins (there are such things – envy and all the others) – but if a person wishes to struggle against sin they should join the Salvation Army (or engage in other voluntary action) – not appeal for government to come out with big sticks.

Have a look at New York city with the highest cigarette tax in the nation. Who benefits from this? Organised crime does.

All these well meaning “moral reforms” of government are just (in practice) a support program for criminal organisations – and many people in government (at least at lower levels) get money from these very organizations.

Antony Mueller sheds some light on this with the article “What is Wrong with Economic Growth?http://mises.org/daily/1877

He writes that “Economic growth figures can be determined in a fairly accurate way for an economy, which is in a primitive state and when only a few, easily identifiable and compoundable items are being produced, as it is the case with basic agricultural products.” “The more we move away from very basic goods, and have a more advanced and a dynamic, non-stationary economy with many heterogeneous goods and services, attempts to measure “the economy” become ever more complicated and finally these calculations lose even a rudimentary economic meaning. The concept of total output and its measurement and thus of economic growth is a statistical construct that loses its informational value for an economy characterized by a wide variety of goods and services and in which the production of new types of goods and services occurs, while many other items become obsolete.”

I am not going to repeat his whole article here, but the who concept of what is genuine economic growth and how it is measured is highly subjective. Even my own economy has one set of figures for my banker, one for the government and one for me!

You are probably right that for some individuals their economy grew as opposed to others who’s economy contracted during the expansion of the government, but to try to quantify this and then aggregate this into a percentage and then to further draw a conclusion that the economy really grew despite state expanision is far from certain.

If you meant to say in your previous post that the market still functions at a certain level despite state intervention, you are absolutely correct. But what I would like to find out is how do you know for sure that despite expanding statism in America, the “national economy” grew?

Hmmm. Not so sure about that. There are plenty that have crashed and burned. You do know that most countries now have a Constitution, right? And in fact, most countries actually dutifully follow their Constitution, unlike the U.S., which honors it only in the breach. Granted, those other Constitutions are arcane, technical documents that don’t seek to limit state power as much as ours did, but the point is that those governments actually pretend to be bound by their document much more than ours does.

So what is it, then, that causes(d?) the U.S. to remain so much more free for so long? Could it have been the general culture and historical uniqueness of the populace? And as that changed, so did the meaning of the Constitution, to the point where it really doesn’t constrain much of anything anymore?

Just because we haven’t failed as spectacularly as the others doesn’t mean that we haven’t also failed at constraining our government.

And don’t overlook the benefits of the USD being the reserve currency – we’ve leveraged our welfare state beyond our means. We may look prosperous right now, but so did my next door neighbor until he declared bankruptcy.

The GDP figure like all other government statistics is based on fraud. The government GDP figure assumes that property taken from us in the form of taxation/inflation and then spent is economic growth. This is not “growth” in the least. There are many articles on this site and elsewhere that do a far better job than me critiquing this methodology. The burden of proof is on you and the defenders of this methodology to prove that institutional theft and subsequent spending somehow “grows” the economy. This is a dishonest assertion. The economic growth pie still has the same amount of slices in it. New pieces of pie have not been produced in this move. The existing pieces just have merely been transferred from the rightful owner to the crooks (the State) which then spends the loot, gains power and expands. New growth has not occurred. Maybe the GDP should be called the Gross Government Product or GGP which would refer to the growth of the annual growth of the state.

The CPI methodology also has been subjected to withering criticism on this site and others. What empiricists will not admit is that the government no matter Soviet or American or Bolivia has a powerful motive to skew the numbers to make growth look high and inflation look low by using the time tested ways of manipulating the numbers.

As for whether the economy has expanded even under worse-than-average government interference, I thought that was the standard opinion even at Mises.org, although they state that it would have grown even more in the absence of interference. I particularly like the metaphor of NFL players attempting to carry on a game with an elephant on the field. The elephant is big, stupid and dangerous, but good players get accustomed to it and work around it to the best of their ability.

I know empiricism sometimes gets a bad name around here, but we’re talking about an empirical issue of what happened in the past. What standard do you use that does not show growth? Or in the great words of Steve Dutch ( http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/pscindx.htm ), what kind of evidence would result in you admitting your belief was wrong?

This is a succinct expression of the anti-freedom mentality.

It is not remotely appropriate or beneficial for you to arrogate power to yourself so as to “allow” or disallow others to engage in peaceful, cooperative, voluntary activity. It is destructive and harmful.

Furthermore, there is no “we” that is doing this “allowing” or disallowing. There is merely a faction of some people who are forcing others to bend to their will. This faction is often led and bankrolled by the very people who would most benefit by forcing other people to stay out of the casino business — businesses have since the dawn of civilization colluded with government. It’s an Unholy Alliance — businesses provide the cash, and the government provides the bullying and thuggery to keep potential competitors away. They win, and literally everyone else loses.

If “we” genuinely did not want more casinos, then no other casinos would open because they would have no customers. Each individual should be allowed to vote with his wallet as to which businesses open and which do not.

It is this anti-freedom mentality that has contributed to keeping New Orleans in a state of economic decline and degradation for around 100 years. I lived there for many years, love the city with all my heart, and know first hand the level of profoundly destructive economic crimes that the thieves and thugs who call themselves “government” have perpetrated on the people, the casino saga being only one of the more recent.

Only if you use the government rigged GDP figures which count “government spending” (theft from others)and inflation as economic growth. The above comment would mean the Soviet economy “grew” in the 1980′s. Curious, because its economy actually “implodes” later in the decade. I wonder how anyone’s GDP number accounted for that?

In reality, GDP growth statistics do not mean that a country is prosperous; they are as phoney as the CPI data.

If casinos just slosh money around, so does Hollywood, the video game industry, book companies, TV stations, etc.

- Josh

quasibill, it seems to me that the constitutional model has been the most succesful in history at preserving liberty. Even when government undergoes expansions, they tend to be limited enough that the economy continues expanding and people still want to immigrate there. I see far too many actual spectacular failures (Zimbabwe is trying awful hard to be the poster country of that) for me to apply that phrase to countries such as my own, and far too few with a better track record.

Also, we have one land based casino because that is all we would allow. We are not Las Vegas and don’t want to be. When Harrah’s opened here they had restrictions preventing them from competing with our local economy (no restaurants, no hotel’s). Time has passed and their projected revenue stream has consistently failed to meet expectations. For that reason they have been granted a number of tax beaks which kind of defeats the purpose for having them here in the first place. They have been allowed to build a hotel (under construction when Katrina hit – still not complete) and opened a fine dining establishment in a hope to increase their revenue. Harrah’s New Orleans has a long and tortured past that includes bankruptcies, corruption investigations and years and years of poor financial performance. We do also have some gaming ships (Treasure Chest, Boomtown and Bally’s) but they are not making out like bandits either. New Orleans’s was a top convention destination which would be a hurdle for more casino development. Conventioneers by and large are not the most enthusiastic gamblers.

I don’t know if you remember this or not but Nagin came up with the same desperate idea back in October while I was still a refuge. It did not go very far – it never would because it would not work.

Of course Harrah’s won’t give up the monopoly they paid so much to acquire without a fight, but with a national concern for the rebuilding of New Orleans, this angle should be the basis for a lot of good articles.