This article (http://www.channel3000.com/technology/14916807/detail.html) tells about a lawmaker's idea to put a blanket tax on video games and gaming equipment in order to fund moving 17 year olds who commit a minor offense to juveniles court instead of adult court. Many people favor moving 17 year olds out of the adult court system for minor offenses, but are questioning the validity of the video game tax. I see several issues with the video game tax as well.
1) The video game tax applies to everyone. If a person is 25 and purchasing a video game, they have to pay. It d0es not distinguish between taxing violent video games and nonviolent ones. If I go to the store and pick up a copy of Tetris--my personal favorite, by the way--I am being taxed to put 17 year olds in the juvenile justice system. This does not affect me. I do not care if 17 year olds are being convicted in juvy or not for two reasons: one, I'm 18 and therefore an adult anyways, and two: I don't commit crimes. This change in the juvenile justice system has very little effect on many people who buy video games.
2) The tax implies that video games are the reasons why people commit crimes. If it only applied to violent video games, such as Halo, I would understand this tax a little more, even though I don't think there is a link between violent video games and violent crime. There's a link between violent people (who may or may not play violent video games) and violent crime. And violent crimes would be transfered to adult court anyway for a 17 year old, making that argument irrelevant.
3) The PPC. Let's oversimplify things and say that a 17 year old can be doing one of two things: committing misdemeanors or playing video games. For every hour that a person spends playing video games, guess what they're not doing? Committing misdemeanors. So if the goal was to reduce crime, shouldn't we just get all the kids video game systems and tell them to have fun? That, of course, would lead to other things, but that's called a trade-off.
This law does not even come close to providing a reasonable way to raise the funds to move all 17 year olds into the juvenile justice system. By taxing video gamers, we are simply implying that they are responsible for teen crime. This is not the case. The senator who wrote this law needs to get himself a copy of an econ textbook and take a look at it. Then, perhaps, he might be able to draft a law that would make more sense.
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3 comments:
I totally agree that "cracking down" on violent video games is a stupid. It's not going to solve anything to stop the producing and distributing of video games. A kid doesn't play a violent video game and then wake up the next day and think, "I think I'm gonna kill someone today like I did in that video game." Honestly, the only way to try and lessen school crime is by preventing the emotional abuse that leads kids to that point.
Wow, this is just... bizarre. The two components (crime and video games) are completely unrelated. No, wait, let me rephrase that... 17-year-olds being charged as adults versus being sent to juvy and video games have nothing in common.
I sat here pondering for a good long time about what sort of tax could be placed upon video games to improve people's well-being or to raise money while still making sense. I'm coming up with zilch. The only reason a tax should be placed upon it is if externalities are being produced (such as taxing gasoline to reduce driving and, consequently, harmful fuel emissions that destroy the environment).
But video games don't do that. At worst, some people believe that they promote violence. But not necessarily violence in 17-year-olds whose cases are being held in limbo while the courts try to decide where to try them. Or, even less relevent, you could get a seizure from playing (ha ha). Neither of those affect the public much, especially the seizures. Even the violence link isn't that pertinent and a tax wouldn't solve that problem in the least bit.
If anything, video games make people sit around inside on their butts more than they might otherwise, forgoing exercise in exchange for flashing lights and easy access to junk food. This, in turn, could decrease life expectancy and leave more social security for those who are left (assuming it still exists in the future). So, if anything, couldn't they help generate money?
Plus, those gamer-types would probably just get cheap pirated copies if taxes on games got too high. They tend not to care much about that. (And that's pretty hypocritical of me, lol.)
Wow, excellent analysis, ladies! All three of you have great points.
The only way for a tax (etc) to work to control an externality is for...the tax...to be ON...the externality...
Hmm. Does that make too much sense?
Great job -
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