Petition against Casino
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Please duo duo support if u haven't.
And sign the petition against building casino in singapore.
http://www.facts.com.sg/ -
This thread is duplicated from the one which is now closed. I hope ppl can be aware of why others are against opening a casino in singapore.
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u think a petition can convince them to let go of the big pot of gold casino is gonna bring them? no, i dont think so.... theres nothing anyone can do to stop it.. casino will come and its here to stay.
my say is that there is no use worryingtoo much. although i myself dont gamble but look around, gambling is already everywhere. from underground bookies to 4D/ToTo, its everywhere. those who want to gamble u cant stop them, those who dont you cant force them. -
Succeed or not, i dun know. But I know the petition is a worthly cause.Originally posted by dibilo:u think a petition can convince them to let go of the big pot of gold casino is gonna bring them? no, i dont think so.... theres nothing anyone can do to stop it.. casino will come and its here to stay.
Duo duo support the petition -
Once more revived
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I am very aware of the fact that legalized gambling like the following has already been allowed.
1) Horse Betting.
2) Soccer Betting.
3) Sweepstakes.
4) Toto.
5) 4D.
6) Fruits Machine.
And I see no reason to bar casinos. If you want to bar casinos, bar Singapore pools altogether.
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Casino is meant for big time gambling. Your examples of legalised gambling is like comparing house cats with lions. The potential problems from a casino is a much bigger threat and have been brought up by many ppl in this forum n newspapers.Originally posted by Nelstar:I am very aware of the fact that legalized gambling like the following has already been allowed.
1) Horse Betting.
2) Soccer Betting.
3) Sweepstakes.
4) Toto.
5) 4D.
6) Fruits Machine.
And I see no reason to bar casinos. If you want to bar casinos, bar Singapore pools altogether. -
You mean people don't gamble big time in the following?Originally posted by SnowFlag:Casino is meant for big time gambling. Your examples of legalised gambling is like comparing house cats with lions. The potential problems from a casino is a much bigger threat and have been brought up by many ppl in this forum n newspapers.
Soccer etc? -
But a casino is something that will lure housewives with too much time on their hands to go and throw away the household finances.Do we want to become Japan with parents leaving their kids unattended for long periods while they go and play pachinko games?The urge to gamble is already in the blood of us Asians, please do not encourage any further.
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How big can a kid gamble?Originally posted by SnowFlag:Casino is meant for big time gambling. Your examples of legalised gambling is like comparing house cats with lions. The potential problems from a casino is a much bigger threat and have been brought up by many ppl in this forum n newspapers.
If they are big time gamblers, they won't flinch even if they need to go gentings. Come on, you never heard of 10k bids on soccer or horse racing? You never heard how much a person can gamble away on a fruit machine?
I saw with my own eyes, maximum bet, within 4 hours, one guy gambled away 30k SGD on a fruit machine. $30,000 u believe or not? 1 touch of a button $10. used a card to let the machine run wild and drink coffee. 3000+ games and all gone. -
If someone wants to commit suicide, I think u can't do anything except jabbed the fool with a tranquilizer each time he wakes up.Originally posted by LazerLordz:But a casino is something that will lure housewives with too much time on their hands to go and throw away the household finances.Do we want to become Japan with parents leaving their kids unattended for long periods while they go and play pachinko games?The urge to gamble is already in the blood of us Asians, please do not encourage any further.
He might bang the walls.
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You seen housewives in fruit machine counters? I seen plenty.Originally posted by LazerLordz:But a casino is something that will lure housewives with too much time on their hands to go and throw away the household finances.Do we want to become Japan with parents leaving their kids unattended for long periods while they go and play pachinko games?The urge to gamble is already in the blood of us Asians, please do not encourage any further. -
A soccer match takes more than an hour to complete. Not every time hv a soccer match de.Originally posted by Nelstar:You mean people don't gamble big time in the following?
Soccer etc?
A turn in the casino takes much less. And the ppl can bet many many times in day.
A gambler may bet $1000 for a match, but for a casino, even betting $100 per turn for several times can easily exceed $1000. -
Yes they can gamble that amount in a short span of time, and the next thing you know, stupidity knows no boundary.Originally posted by SnowFlag:A soccer match takes more than an hour to complete. Not every time hv a soccer match de.
A turn in the casino takes much less. And the ppl can bet many many times in day.
A gambler may bet $1000 for a match, but for a casino, even betting $100 per turn for several times can easily exceed $1000.
And stupidity is a disease. This disease is incurable, it can lessen with time but still it affects the victims. And these victims are vulnerable unless you can monitor their lives strictly. Is the Government capable of that? No, unless humans are programmed like robots.
You want progress, you want increase in trade, you want a smoke-free society, you don't want legalized gambling, you want freedom. These things don't come hand-in-hand.
If one does not live by their own rules and complain that the Government is misleading them, and causing grieve when your hands and brains are controlled by your own thinking, then I can only say one thing:
You'll never be happy.
Yes, restrictions by Government will see off madness, at least it acts as a temporary measures against majority.
Yes I agree people can gamble their lives away without moderator but foolishness isn't the Government's blame.
And stupidity is a disease. It corrupts from within, rots to the outside.
There is no way to make the whole world happy, because human are delicate creatures with each, a unique thinking of their own. They have their own yardstick to determine their choices, as such making it complicated to implement decisions.
And did you notice something? You want something for someone else thinking for their benefits, but had you ever thought that someone else might not accept what you plan for them? Even if it's for their own good?
Think about it.
Thank you for your consideration but I think the economy will be slightly boosted by the jobs vacancy caused by a casino and some thrown away money by travellers. -
It does not matter whether Singapore start a Casino, Singaporeans still gamble.Originally posted by SnowFlag:A soccer match takes more than an hour to complete. Not every time hv a soccer match de.
A turn in the casino takes much less. And the ppl can bet many many times in day.
A gambler may bet $1000 for a match, but for a casino, even betting $100 per turn for several times can easily exceed $1000.
The most important is to gamble within your own limits. If not, you can learn through the hard way............. -
Dec 17, 2004
Casinos: Economic costs as big as any benefits
By Yeoh Lam Keong
For The Straits Times
THE integrated casino resort project (ICR) has been proposed principally to re-energise Singapore's flagging tourism industry.
On its surface, the model looks seductive. Only 30 to 50 per cent of the project is supposed to be centred on gaming. The bulk of the revenues from the $2 billion investment, we are told, should, as in Atlantis or Las Vegas, come from an alluring infrastructure of high-end hotels, world-class entertainment, restaurants and convention facilities that would also synergistically benefit tourism as a whole.
Surely, the argument goes, if through ingenious regulation we can contain the worst excesses of the ICR's acknowledged social ills, we should be willing to step outside the box of our traditional caution and give it a spin?
The fact that Thailand, Korea and Macau are all planning to deregulate and/or further attract investment in this area gives added urgency to the project. Do we want to be left behind? Should we not, as Associate Professor Winston Koh of SMU, and others, have argued, also establish ourselves as serious players in the mega gaming/tourism sector?
Tempting
LIKE its high rolling namesake, the ICR project looks tempting. A much darker picture, however, emerges if one looks at its economic costs.
First, while the benefits are potentially large (Prof Koh estimates the ICR can add 0.3 to 1 per cent of GDP), the costs are equally big. Cost benefit studies of Australia's experience in gaming estimate a sum of between A$1.8 billion (S$2.3 billion) and A$5.6 billion on both the benefits and costs sides of the ledger.
Australian Productivity Commission (APC) listed the following among the main costs: Bankruptcy, loss of work productivity, job losses, police incidents, court cases, divorce and violence. The impact on family dysfunction and breakdown is obvious.
The APC found that 96 per cent of problem gamblers suffered from depression, 58 per cent have considered suicide and 14 per cent had attempted it. Half spent over 50 per cent of their income on their vice.
Problem gamblers may constitute only a tiny minority - typically, 1 per cent to 2 per cent of any population, according to Australian and American studies. But the multiplier effects of their pathology can be large. In Singapore, potentially 40,000 to 60,000 people may become problem gamblers. But between 120,000 and 180,000 family members may be indirectly harmed by their vice.
Economist call such impact 'negative externality'. The market is ill-suited in valuing 'non-price goods' or in regulating the negative social effects of certain kinds of economic activity. We know, for example, that it cannot satisfactorily price the benefits of 'clean air' or a 'green environment' or prevent pollution reaching excessive levels without regulation.
Similarly, the market cannot adequately price or limit the impact of gambling-related depression, poverty or suicide on a family. What is the true cost of family dysfunction and breakdown? The counselling charges paid by pathological gamblers hardly captures the full cost.
For this reason, economists who have done cost-benefit analyses of gaming have argued that its costs have been badly understated. Most analyses, using conservative estimates, have found the costs outweigh the benefits.
Can regulation reduce these costs? Can limiting access to casinos to high-rolling tourists or to rich citizens, for example, reduce the number of problem gamblers? Can't Singapore have its cake and eat it too?
Unfortunately, the economics of the gaming industry work against this.
To begin with, the bulk of most casinos' clientele tend to be local residents - usually 70 per cent to 80 per cent even in tourist-intensive locations like Australia or Genting, in Malaysia. Atlantis and Las Vegas, which rely principally on non-residents or foreign tourists, are not at all typical examples.
In Singapore's case, the greater the regulation of locals, the greater will be the implicit 'tax' on its ICR as compared to less regulated regional gaming establishments. Over time, the more intense the regional competition gets, the more financially unviable will local regulation become. After sinking more than $2 billion into such a project, there is likely to be increasing pressure to relax or dilute restrictions on local clientele so the ICR can be competitive with other casinos in the region, subject to fewer restrictions. The financial viability of the local casino may require the acceptance of high levels of local misery. -
Unseen threat
IN ADDITION, the ICR, by its very nature, will pose an unseen threat to the very tourism infrastructure it is designed to energise. This is because ICR-type operations typically subsidise the hotel, entertainment and other facilities attached to the casino. Often, such facilities barely break even or may even lose money, but the project as a whole is supported by the gaming profits from the clientele that such facilities draw.
If the ICR is extremely successful, there may be a positive spillover into nearby hotels, restaurants, pubs or entertainment venues. But this would be the rare and lucky case. Statistically, 30 to 40 per cent of gaming facilities fail, with a large proportion surviving, but not very well.
It is in these more common cases that the ICR could become a Trojan horse, with a potentially destructive impact on the local hospitality industry because of its massive non-gaming infrastructure. Being heavily subsidised, these facilities could damage surrounding hotels, entertainment venues or convention places. Around Sky City, Auckland, for example, hotel rates have fallen around 10 per cent due to competition from the casino's cheap subsidised hotels.
In a booming hospitality industry with already high occupancy rates, this negative impact might be small. But with significant excess capacity, flagging tourist arrivals and already thin profit margins, the effect could be a harmful diversion of trade, loss of existing jobs and bankruptcies. Unfortunately, this is likely to be the situation we face today.
More worryingly, the subsidised infrastructure of the ICR could act as a distorting barrier to entry and investment in the high-end segment of the hospitality and convention industry that Singapore is seeking to develop further.
Such potential negative impacts typically do not feature in standard cost-benefit analyses. They are, rather, hidden financial and economic risks that are inherent in the nature of the ICR project itself.
Given these risks, to describe the ICR as an 'option' that Singapore might like to buy, as some of its defenders have described it, may be misleading. Instead, the project is perhaps more accurately characterised, in financial market parlance, as the selling of an 'uncovered option'. Besides the certain social costs and the big initial investment involved in purchasing this 'option', the total losses to the economy as a whole could be unexpectedly large, open-ended and extend over an indefinite time horizon, as in the case of the sale of an 'uncovered option' gone wrong.
Considering these risks, the question of whether there are alternative projects that could fulfil the same tourism objectives as the ICR naturally arise.
Here, one cannot help but feel that Hong Kong has chosen a better direction with its West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) development project.
The proposed mega development will cost $5 billion and is designed to enhance Hong Kong's position as Asia's premiere centre for the arts, culture and entertainment. The WKCD is also expected to generate 8,500 permanent new jobs.
That is better than the 1,500 to 4,000 jobs that the Singapore ICR is estimated to provide, with positive rather than negative social effects and genuine benefit to related service industries.
Just as importantly, together with Disneyworld, the WKCD could help brand Hong Kong as the leading family-friendly, sophisticated Asian international tourist destination. By comparison, what impact on Singapore's branding would the ICR have?
Would we not be diluting our tourism branding by moving closer to the niches occupied by gaming cities like Las Vegas and Macau? Is this what we want as a key part of our tourism strategy, let alone in setting the tone for Singapore's social policy?
ICR proponents argue that gambling of all sorts is already rampant in Singapore. Professor Peter Collins, Director of the Centre for the Study of Commercial Gaming in Britain, estimates that gambling per capita in Singapore is already among the highest in the world.
Establishing an ICR, its proponents argue, could capture some of the business now lost to cruises and foreign casinos, and raise tax revenues that can be used for social good as well as to rehabilitate the worst effects of problem gambling.
Regulation
FRANKLY, I find this argument rather weak. The existing scale of gambling is primarily determined by social policy and regulation rather than dictated by local consumer taste.
In regulated France, for example, spending on gaming forms only 1.3 per cent of GDP. Compare this to a similarly rich, but less regulated country like Japan, where 'pachinko' gaming turnover alone forms a whopping 6.7 per cent of GDP.
Unlike Japan, Singapore is not desperate for alternative fiscal revenues.
To my mind, the admittedly high existing per capita spending on gambling in Singapore is not an argument for establishing yet another gaming venue in the form of a legal high-end casino.
Rather, it is a much stronger argument for a careful review of regulation of existing gaming facilities - including legal 4D, 'football clubs' with their gaming machines and illegal gambling - as well as of the adequacy of counselling, education and community support for existing problem gamblers.
Although superficially compelling, the ICR project, with its dark and hidden costs, is a Faustian bargain. And as with most such bargains, the devil lurks in the details.
The writer is Director of Economics and Strategy at the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and Vice-President of the Economic Society of Singapore (ESS). The views expressed here are his own and do not represent those of either the GIC or the ESS. -
Cheesy
(Nelstar used wrong nyck) -
i tot i said all this threads abt against casiano nonsense were complete farking stupid and lame?
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whether the casino fails or not, it will still create the negative impacts de.Originally posted by Lala Kraft Tomb Rayder:*yawns* So if the casino fail aren't you happy idiots invested and created temporary vacancies for jobs? Especially if the investors are foreign sources?
Setting up a casino only benefits the ppl at the top, but the ppl below has to bear the cons.
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Why don't you quote all the posts from various sources?
Let me do my long long debate from now. (I'm bored at work you see)
Let me have a show of hands who thinks gambling is not a vice? I think anyone who shows his hand is either a moron or trying to be funny.
Nevermind that, let's get to the important points:
#1 - Legalized gambling is an attraction in tourism. Just like prostitution. Don't ask me why, but people like to travel just to screw their lives.
Ask any tom, dick or harry, if they never knew anyone who goes overseas just to gamble or screw around. Travel expenses include: Accomodation, shopping, food, gambling/screwing. It affects locals too, yeah, locals will decide, hey it's better to stay in Singapore and screw/gamble our lives away.
Question A: Gambling is whose fault? Government or Gambler's?
Question B: Money thrown away in other currencies worth it or people throwing money in our banks more worth it?
BRB throwing more questions after work. -
Derfel thinks you're at fault. Derfel says so and Derfel is always right.Originally posted by Nelstar:Why don't you quote all the posts from various sources?
Let me do my long long debate from now. (I'm bored at work you see)
Let me have a show of hands who thinks gambling is not a vice? I think anyone who shows his hand is either a moron or trying to be funny.
Nevermind that, let's get to the important points:
#1 - Legalized gambling is an attraction in tourism. Just like prostitution. Don't ask me why, but people like to travel just to screw their lives.
Ask any tom, dick or harry, if they never knew anyone who goes overseas just to gamble or screw around. Travel expenses include: Accomodation, shopping, food, gambling/screwing. It affects locals too, yeah, locals will decide, hey it's better to stay in Singapore and screw/gamble our lives away.
Question A: Gambling is whose fault? Government or Gambler's?
Question B: Money thrown away in other currencies worth it or people throwing money in our banks more worth it?
BRB throwing more questions after work.
Ha! Ha! Ha! -
/me agrees +10000000000000000000000000000000000000Originally posted by Derfel:Derfel thinks you're at fault. Derfel says so and Derfel is always right.
Ha! Ha! Ha! -
Derfel thinks it's better to use commas to separate every 3 zeros.Originally posted by ceecookie:/me agrees +10000000000000000000000000000000000000
Ha! Ha! Ha! -
All at fault... but educating them is the key. If I don't bring the issues up, then I am also at fault.Originally posted by Nelstar:Question A: Gambling is whose fault? Government or Gambler's?
Tourists go in and lose their hard earn money, and locals go in and lose their hard earn money, isn't of much difference.Originally posted by Nelstar:Question B: Money thrown away in other currencies worth it or people throwing money in our banks more worth it?