Location

This just in:

The Las Vegas unemployment rate has hit an astounding 13.9 percent. This represents a near doubling of the rate of just one year ago. Factoring in underemployment in Vegas -- a city full of chronic underemployment in the best of times -- this paints a bleak picture.

It is not surprising and not necessarily all that bad in Vegas, as unsustainable an economic model as ever there was. You can't build a huge water-sucking toxicopolis in the middle of the high desert and expect it to last, especially when the economy there is not based on something that would make sense like taking advantage of copious sunlight to produce electricity for export. The vice-based economy was bound to collapse one way or the other. The natural limits to growth (water) would have killed Vegas anyway eventually so maybe this attrition is a good thing on net there.

Of course, this is about people, not statistics or theories. Pity for those many down-and-out in Vegas is entirely founded, but this is not surprising. An economy based on taking people's money and giving them nothing but some weird rush of false hope in return is fundamentally faulty.

Maybe someone will open a huge solar power plant on the ruins of the casinos. One can dream...