8 new casinos proposed: Long shot or good bet for Michigan?

[Johnnny5]

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Don't get me wrong, three casinos is enough, but in a city starved of jobs, these are thousands of reasonably well paying jobs that require a varying levels of skill. Most of them are union. My neighbor accross the street earns a good, full time living working at the casino. He's a great guy. He also happens to be young and black. I'm not sure what he'd be doing otherwise, but in my opinion more localized employment that pays a decent wage without requiring a doctorate would solve a LOT of social ills.

The shrinking number of employment opportunities the casinos provide is another issue. Anyone who has frequented the Detroit casinos over the past decade has seen the incredible push to automation and self service. All three Detroit casinos have eliminated the use of tokens and went to paper receipts for slot play [[That alone eliminated 100's of jobs for those who provided change and filled/emptied the machines). They have also greatly reduced the percentage of floor space devoted to manned table games and have replaced them with more slots and even automated some games that previously required human dealers. Last time I went to Motor City I was also shocked to see they had replaced some of the waitresses that supplied non alcoholic beverages with pop dispensers. More casinos would probably just speed up this process as they would have to keep costs low in order to compete.