UPDATED: Another casino, because that worked so well for Atlantic City

This is Philadelphia, where we arrest Jesus one day, go crazy for the Pope the day after that, and on the third day, we hand the keys to the city over to a casino. Once again, Springsteen was right: It's hard to be a saint in the city...this one, anyway.

Gone are the days when we pretended that a new casino operator could be made to bring some architectural pizzazz to the table. With one gaming parlor on North Delaware Avenue and with neighbors in Bensalem and Chester, we know now what to expect: A lifeless dead-air Amazon-style warehouse, except with rows of slot machines instead of boxes of "50 Shades of Gray." Yeah, there are some pluses -- there'll be some more blue-collar construction jobs, and hopefully Live! in South Philly can be an escape valve for a few of the thousands of gaming workers who've been laid off in Altantic City -- folks who should be in our thoughts and prayers, especially with the holidays and winter's chill approaching.

But you'd think that watching the neutron bomb -- the people are destroyed, but the buildings are still standing -- go off in Atlantic City would be a cautionary tale for Philadelphia, no? Our modern AC was born, essentially of a panic that set in during the mid-1970s, when it first became clear that factory jobs might not be coming back. It's kind of ironic that gambling in Atlantic City was born of a gambler's mentality -- the idea that a faded city could win it all back with one roll of the dice, a kind of magical thinking that this would work...because no one else east of Las Vegas would ever open a rival casino.

It's probably too little, too late -- but I was fascinated to see the other day that they're taking the old Showboat and doing what should have happened in Atlantic City in 1978 -- opening up a college. When you think about it, AC is a walkable city with lots of available real estate and even a potential, dare I say it, for hipness. With a rail line, an airport, and, now in the digital age, the ability to telecommute, you can almost see it as Fishtown 25 years ago...but Fishtown with an ocean! It's probably a crazy notion, but you want to hear an idea that's even crazier: The idea that casinos in Atlantic City will bounce back.

That's why it's kind of nauseating to see Philadelphia take one more compulsive step down this pathway of failure. Casinos are "economic development" in the same sense that Taco Bell is "dinner." And they are only palaces in the sense that they are monuments to the crony capitalism of the politically connected. Gambling is a tax levied on the working-class people who fantasize about moving up a notch with a spin of the wheel -- to protect the societal "winnings" of the filthy rich who wouldn't be caught dead in a place called Live! And you're kidding yourself if you don't think that Live! will mean more addictive gambling, which leads to more crime, shattered families, even suicide. You can argue whether we need "big government" to cure social problems, but it's repulsive and immoral when your government goes into the business of intentionally causing them. And it's a massive distraction for public officials who should be working on the things that actually create jobs that last -- like better public schools for example.

But, no, Philly is going to Do AC. It is what it is.

UPDATE: What;s the difference between the economic of casinos and the economics of fracking? Good question!