State Loses When It Depends on Gambling

What a sad headline! “California on Path to Become Nation’s Gambling Capital” (Aug. 25) depicts the tragic decline of California’s economy and sense of self-worth.

Where we once led in manufacturing, arts, sciences and other productive industries, we are now reduced to collecting uncertain revenue from one of the most useless activities upon which to base a state’s economy.

Gambling produces addiction, environmental problems, a bit of tax return and, not incidentally, great wealth for the corporate interests that own the casinos, along with the Native American tribes that should be helped to better ways of emerging from poverty.

Julie May

Los Angeles