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The problem with immersing so completely into one's own virtual reality is solipsism, a kind of holistic selfishness; other people don't matter unless they are players in one's own themed fantasy. It costs $150 a month just to keep a third of an acre green, and so the per capita water usage in Las Vegas is a gluttonous 343 gal. per day, compared with 200 in Los Angeles. The 702 area code has a higher proportion of unlisted numbers than any other. And although the per capita income is the 12th highest in the U.S., the electorate last year voted against building and improving parks. Officials say they need to build 12 new schools a year through the end of the century to accommodate the projected population influx, but they fear voters will decline to pay for them. Such civic disengagement is now a national phenomenon, but Las Vegas is at the cutting edge -- and always has been. Back during the city's first spurt of urban hypertrophy in the '50s, when other new cities were grandly and confidently expanding their schools and social-welfare systems, Las Vegas was pointedly stingy.
Today's casino-driven prosperity is a somewhat self-contained bubble. The state's welfare case load has risen 54% just since 1991. "We currently have 10,500 new jobs coming online," says welfare administrator Mila Florence, referring to the staffing of the Luxor, Treasure Island and MGM Grand. "The number of persons coming into the state seeking those jobs far exceeds the number of jobs available, so our agency becomes the safety net."
Nor is it just social programs the locals are disinclined to fund. Last year voters defeated a series of bond issues that would have paid for 300 new police officers, seven new police substations, 500 new jail beds and improved security in the schools. Is the crime problem bad? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that the rates for murder and other violent crimes are somewhat higher than for the nation generally. But then they always have been -- as is typical of resort areas, where tourists skew the figures. What's interesting is how even in its level of violence the rest of America has come to resemble Las Vegas. The city's homicide rate was 128% higher than the nation's as recently as 1982; today the Las Vegas homicide figure is only 56% higher than the national rate. In 1982 the local rate of violent crime -- rapes, robberies, assaults, as well as homicides -- was 90% higher than the national figure; today it is only 17% higher.
The theming; Liberace and Michael Jackson and Siegfried and Roy; the water gluttony; the refusal to build schools and police stations. It is fair to say that Las Vegas is in denial, which probably explains the local predilection for smarmy euphemism. From Wayne Newton on down, every man in Vegas calls every woman a lady. One of the local abortion clinics is called A Lady's Needs. Signs all over McCarran Airport declare it a nonsmoking building, yet just as noticeable as the banks of slot machines is the reek of old cigarettes. It strikes almost no one as ironic that the patron of the M.B. Dalitz Religious School is the late Moe Dalitz, the celebrated gangster.