Many states have come to be utterly dependant on the revenues yielded from slot machine operations. Interestingly enough, the reports from many states, reveal that slots steady stream of income supplants, at times, the traditional sources such as corporate income tax.
Delaware’s horse racing and horse farming industries, which in 1994 were in a shattered state, have revived with infusion of slot machines. But suddenly, Legislature was able to also curtail the top personal income-tax rate back in the late 1990s, by almost 2.5 percent over the period of seven years. The figures are more than enticing and some officials have alerted that states are no better than addicted problem gamblers, craving more and more for the gambling proceeds. It is as though gambling money were obtained for free.
Delaware’s slots success stories have become nearly mythological ones, passed from one state to another, and who knows perhaps from one generation to the next. Recently, on a stormy weeknight, on which normally not single sane person would go out, 2,500 clinking video slot machines managed to suck in customers from remote regions such as Baltimore, Washington and Richmond.
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