First off welcome to the board dontclick, but to say that gambling and loansharking are completely dead is just ridiculous, its the mobs bread and budda. Your are right about their waning control on the unions, gone are the days of them having any influence on a national level, and also gone forever are them controlling the huge teamster unions, but to think that they dont have any union prescence at all would be a mistake. They still have influence in a lotta smaller unions and a number of different industries and i dont see that changing anytime soon. To know what the mob is up to all you have to do is look at the cases, and i if u do youll realize that theyre still up to pretty much the same things they always been more or less-gambling, loansharking, yes extortion to, labor racketeering, drugs, fraud, stealing etc.
i really have trouble believing that street level loan sharking or book making is any longer a substantial money maker for them at all. the days of going to your local italian barber shop and asking the man in the back for a bridge loan for $5k simply doesn't happen any more. and if it does it's certainly not being done by the italians of nyc.
union control, white collar crime, drug wholesaling, pump and dumps, fraud, financial and health care scams, yes why not. this is probably where the bulk of their money comes from today...but no mobster in this day and age is making a substantial sum from placing horse bets or lending out cash one thousand dollars at a time...or demanding $200/week from the latest starbuck in town for protection (good luck lol). there simply isn't a demand for any of these services any more strictly from a demographic stand point. not only that but there so many legitimate competitors to these services nowadays like pay day loans or internet gambling that doesn't involved getting your knee caps broken when you can't pay up.
