Craig Benson Quotes

Gaming is the backbone of Nevada's economy.

As a revenue raiser, gambling defies every principle. It’s regressive—it takes far more money out of poor people’s pockets than it does for higher income [people]. It’s cannibalistic—it eats other forms of revenue—when you have your citizens dumping $2 billion down the slots [slot machines], they’re not buying a car, and you lose that tax.

The casinos brought lots of revenue and jobs to our community. We've seen lots of benefits from those tax dollars.

I really do believe most people understand raising tax rates is bad for the economy, it costs jobs. It actually in the long term undermines revenue.

There has been a black hole in the bar business in Las Vegas, particularly on the Strip in tourist areas.

Nobody is going to come into Alabama to buy lottery tickets. The only people that are going to buy them here are those that live here, and that's just a certain percentage of people.

Legalizing betting would create over a hundred thousand new jobs, over $6 billion in wages, and inject $25 billion into our economy.

casino owners spoke more loudly than any of the other kings of industry to defend their contribution to society. They could speak more loudly because theirs was the purest activity of civilized man. They had transcended the need for a product. They could maintain and advance life with machines that made nothing but money.

Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1 percent of GDP reduces output over the next three years by nearly 3 percent. The effect is highly significant.

As I said in my state of the state address, we can no longer rely on gaming and sales taxes to pay our way. Indian gaming next door in California is eroding our major industry in Nevada.

There is a respectable body of economic thought that holds that casino gambling is actually economically regressive to a state and a community.

So every dollar of income that I have that is potentially taxed away is a dollar I can't put in my company to create a job. My entire company is around job creation.

Last year people won more than one billion dollars playing poker. And casinos made twenty-seven billion just by being around those people.

Currently, Boston has only nine percent of the state's population - but we provide more than 16 percent of the jobs and 19 percent of the state's revenues.

The Chinese have always enjoyed gambling, and Macau is the only place in Greater China where gambling is legal. So I believe the government understands that there has to be a place for it.

Slot machine revenue may briefly fatten the State’s bottom line, but slots do this by hurting the local economy…. Choking traffic, violent crime, and petty larceny always follow wherever gambling has been implemented.

In the next 20 years every major metropolitan area in America with a population of a million or more will have some form of a casino.

You allow me to license and regulate marijuana, and I'll fill every hotel and motel room in the state of Kentucky.

What sensible people want from a tax is to raise as much money as possible with the least disruption to the economy.

The pendulum swings back and forth in America regarding gaming. Right now the climate is favorable for Indian gaming so the tribes had better make hay while the sun shines so to speak.

Sometimes, tax rate increases create the very problems that the spending is intended to cure. In other words, the tax rate increases reduce economic growth; they shrink the pie; they cause more poverty, more despair, more unemployment, which are all things government is trying to alleviate with spending.

It's odd to grow up in a gaming town because... we know all of the tricks that are going on behind the scenes.

I grew up in Las Vegas. My mom worked in pretty much every casino on the Strip.

The linkage between tax rates and public services is, if not non-existent, negative.

Regional gaming across the United States has had serious challenges, not just in Cleveland or Cincinnati, but also across the United States.