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[sludgehound]

Vegas, Baby!

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21657799-recovering-las-vegas-colourful-microcosm-america-viva-again?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/VivaAgain

Las Vegas’s recovery, like America’s, seems to have to come to the wealthiest first. The new houses being built, such as those at Ascaya, are mostly targeted at the wealthy; many of the poor still remain underwater. The same is true of the city’s main industry: smaller, less modern casinos, which do not have the money to invest in redevelopment, will continue to die, as their older patrons wither away and are not replaced by newer, younger gamblers. Even as the recovery grows, gambling jobs will not return to the generous salaries that they used to pay for a long time, nor will the same profits be made flipping houses or putting up new casinos. The city’s frenetic pace of growth will probably never reach its pre-crisis peak.

But Sin City’s recovery shows the enduring ability of America to make improbable ideas work. Some 2m people live in a glittering, sprawling city deep in the desert and hardly think that this is strange. And with its mix of tech-obsessed yuppies, ageing baby-boomer gamblers and thrusting Hispanics, its demography resembles America’s future. That future might not be as bright as it seemed a decade ago, but it is a little more stable. Perhaps what happens in Las Vegas, far from staying there, spreads to the rest of America.