Wisconsin Mulls an Earmarked Video Game Tax 63
Mearlus writes "A Wisconsin lawmaker is proposing a law to add an additional tax on video games and equipment in order to help cover the costs of moving 17-year-old criminals back into the juvenile system." (According to the article, 17-year-olds are at present treated as adults by Wisconsin courts.)
How much would it make? (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither correlation nor causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Can anyone help me understand this or is it nothing more than playing off mythical video game fears and targeting a group of people who don't vote?
Re:Neither correlation nor causation (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume by saying "group of people who don't vote" you're talking about underagers?
If that's what you're thinking than the answer is no. It's more that they're hitting the pocket books of what they see as a minority of voters because they know it's not going to cause the kind of backlash that actually matters. No one is going to get voted out over this.
It's like when they tax cigarettes. The cigarette smoking public is about 20 percent, give or take, depending on who's numbers you use. They know that even if every smoker got pissed about it there really isn't so much of a margin to swing the vote. Why don't they tax (or stop subsidizing) the meat industry instead? It's known to be a health problem and it has a much wider tax base. That coupled with obesity is driving healthcare costs (and thus government payouts) way up.
Oh, that's right. Only about 6% of all Americans are vegetarian. That other 94% are part of the voting public. That's a bad move on election day so tax money helps keep the beef industry alive instead of forcing them to find a way to stand on their own two feet with a product that is in high demand.
So, no, it's not about the age of the voter. It's about the numbers of voters who have something to lose. If you can continue to pound on minority groups of voters it's not going to produce any real change at the top.
But than again, it's not like voting between Democrat and Republican is going to cause a real change at the top either.
Spectacularly, awesomely retarded (Score:3, Insightful)
"The idea being that this is kind of a kids-kids thing, in other words, if we're going to do this for kids maybe this would be a good way to go about it. And if it's not the best way, I'm open to any other way"
Yes, I think it's pretty damn clear that "any other way" is likely to be rather less moronic than this.
Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)