The start of the rainy season finds me on way to check out the Marina Bay complex in Singapore, where the 5.5 billion dollar Sands Casino Resort in Marina Bay opened in 2011.
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| Sands Marina Bay three hotel towers at night |
Look carefully at the photo, do you notice
the humongous, gaudy yacht laying across three hotel towers? It’s a virtual
"Where's Waldo."
The rain begins, and we're not talking
about precipitation in Los Angeles (a once a year drizzle for five, sometimes
five and a half minutes) we're talking about gobs of water falling from the sky
so large they literally hurt when they strike your body. I can now sympathize with the
ant who had the misfortune of standing under a bathtub faucet as it opened.
In less than a minute I'm drenched, my clothing
and shoes soaked through to the bone.
I sprint for the nearest building, taking
refuge in a high tech showroom describing the functionality and design of the entire
Marina Bay center. I find it fascinating how Singapore tries to tout
their “green credentials” when a mammoth amount of resources were used to
build, and further maintain, the giant money sucking machine a couple hundred
meters away.
As the rain subsides, I make my way towards
the complex, using the "Where's Waldo" photo as my compass; exploring
the world today requires much wit and acumen.
Two six foot tall, twenty-five year old
paper thin blonds in mini-skirts, heels, and Prada bags pass by me; I surmise
that Sands Casino has managed to attract some high-rollers.
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| Gucci- Sands Marina Bay |
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| Gondolas in Sands marina bay, Singapore |
The Political Gamble
At the casino’s entrance, there are two
lines, one for non-nationals, and one for natives. A foreign passport gets you
in free, show Singaporean identification and get charged a $100 admission fee
(good for twenty-four hours.)
Contrary to popular politics in the United
States, gambling is NOT a revenue creator, unless
the money comes from outside the locality. Kind of like if twenty of us were marooned on a deserted island, and I said, we need to raise money, I am going to chop
down this coconut tree to build a roulette wheel, and then the rest of you can keep
betting your seashells (currency) until you lose them all to my casino, and
I’ll pay taxes on the money to hire one of you to dig us a latrine.
The island “benefits” from the latrine, a
ditch digger has his salary, and the rest of you have nothing. Meanwhile with
all my new found wealth, I’ve hired someone to build me the Where’s Waldo yacht
(with the rest of the coconut wood, cause as a Tea Party member, I don’t care
what happens to the rest of society) so I can get the hell off your pathetic,
impoverished island, which, with the added carbon emissions my casino has
created, will soon be flooded by rising sea levels. Enjoy your roulette wheel, hopefully it floats.
Casinos produce nothing, and serve no
social function except to satisfy the apparent insatiable stupidity and need
for “thrill” of the masses.
This is why, for years, Nevada has been
able to get away with no personal income taxes, as casinos filled state’s
coffers from suckers worldwide. Now that people have so many more places to
gamble, Las Vegas’s sole competitive advantage is that these behemoth temples
to mankind’s avarice and stupidity are such a site to behold, they themselves
act as tourist attractions.
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| the crowded gaming floor from above |
The $100 entrance fee for locals is a tax
that the goes directly to the Singaporean government, imposed to discourage its
citizens from losing their hard earned money to the syndicates. I guess the
government believes anyone stupid enough to pay a substantial amount of cash so
they can lose more of it, deserves his fate.
Paisa Room Style
I walk onto the casino floor and gaze
around at the sea of humanity whose heads bob with the ebb and flow of the
cards and dice, the electronic spin of modern day slot machines. Most of the
customers are Chinese, the country’s appetite for gambling generally thought to be the greatest of the world’s nationalities.
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| just another casino really- lots of $$ |
I walk upstairs to the VIP area, and
converse with a young Singaporean working the door. He’s
affable, and willing to discuss virtually any topic.
“Do you think it’s possible for a gambler to win?”
“Well my parents taught me gambling was essentially 50/50, but after working at the casino for the last few months, I’m starting to
doubt that.”
“50/50?
They think they build this behemoth on 50/50?”
“I
really don’t know,” he answers sheepishly, a smile on his face.
“Who are the worst tempered gamblers?” I
inquire, fully expecting him to say the Chinese, who have horrible reputations as
ill mannered, arrogant, uncouth aggressors throughout Asia.
“The Singaporeans,” he answers to my
surprise, “I guess they’re doubly mad, cause not only did they lose their
money, but had to pay a good amount to do so.”
“What’s special about the VIP room here?”
I ask, gazing in.
“Higher limits, exclusivity, plus we serve
free drinks.”
“These aren’t the highest limits in the
casino, are they?”
“Oh no that’s the Paisa Room. To gain
access to it you have to wire the casino a minimum of $50,000 and bet it all in
total. So if you wanted to bet $1,000 at a time, you have to do so fifty times
in a row.”
“$50,000 to gain access?”
“50k,” he answers.
“That’s a lot of cash.”
“Somebody wins, and somebody loses.”
Speaking of which Las Vegas Sands stock
price (LVS) is up again today.
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| Sands Marina Bay pool on the roof |
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