people that abuse the christmas assistants.

[Becks]

The bloke who blew it all at the casino got nothing.

But...that's a form of stimulating the economy...

Seriously, though-- Some people.

[Chromatix]

The casino? No, it's largely giving money to people who already have plenty. The redistribution of wealth in the other direction is far less efficient in that setting.

The mother who bought the appliances, though, was making a worthwhile investment. If taken care of, those machines should last a decade and save her money in the long run. Meanwhile, the proceeds go to help keep the appliance manufacturer and retailer in business and providing jobs.

[Geek King]

The casino? No, it's largely giving money to people who already have plenty.

The mother who bought the appliances, though, was making a worthwhile investment. [...] Meanwhile, the proceeds go to help keep the appliance manufacturer and retailer in business and providing jobs.

Er, by your own reasoning in the second paragraph, isn't the casino money going to pay workers for the casino, the people who work security, and the people who make the cards, tables, chips, and slot machines? I will not argue that it is a less wise way of spending the money, but the money still goes back into the economy. The only way it doesn't is if you stash it under the bed or in a coffee can. Even putting it in savings does something to put the money back in the economy, as the banks use that money to make loans and investments.

[Chromatix]

This is true, but I still submit that it's less efficient.

Most of the direct profit from a casino, I imagine, goes to the owners, who probably stick it in a bank or an investment fund. You might have noticed that banks are not nearly as willing to lend money as they used to - which is why businesses are failing and house prices are dropping - and there's also this huge scandal involving a Ponzi scheme that has basically thrown a lot of "invested" money into a black hole.

(I imagine that the generally reduced pace of investment is what caused the Ponzi scheme to collapse. It's a scam that relies on exponentially increasing amounts of money coming in at one end to pay off earlier investors at the other. It lasts longer than a pyramid scheme because the exponent is much smaller - say 1.1 instead of 10 - and the generational timescale is much longer - say a month or a year, rather than a day or a week. But the mechanisms are fundamentally the same and therefore it *will* run out of steam eventually.)

So extra money in the casino's bank is not a bad thing for the economy, per se, but it isn't getting back to actual people nearly as quickly as you might expect.

The appliances, on the other hand, don't have *that* much profit on them (otherwise extended warranties wouldn't be pushed so hard). Most of the money spent on them will go straight to paying workers, from retail and delivery all the way back to some sweaty guys digging iron ore out of the ground.

These are actual people who are now infinitesimally less likely to end up on the dole, which would be a Bad Thing™.