Hillary Clinton considers video game tax
 

Link

....I hate this woman.

Its not a conservative/liberal thing. I'm decidedly middle of the road. This woman SCARES me. She like some nightmare of idiotic ideas made flesh. Her AND Lieberman. You know how in G. I. Joe how Serpentor was made from the DNA of all the most brutal and ruthless leaders in history? I think they did the same with these two except they used stupid corrupt politicians.

Tax on my video games? Bite me. Flat out patently ridiculous bullshit. You're going to sin tax kids? Please. Let put a tax on skateboards, BMX bikes, and rollerblades while we're at it. How about board games? Monopoly teaches greed! Candy Land encourages poor nutrition! Mouse trap advocates animal cruelty!!!!

GAH! The possibilities make my head explode.

Perhaps you should take this story with a grain of salt. Your link, which is to a livejournal which then links to a gaming web site I have never heard of, says this information was according to "sources" which are unspecified.

I agree the "sources" comment is suspect however I believe its Gamepolitics.com's live journal. Gamepolitics is a fairly reputable site. Regardless, my point still stands and if not Hillary than some other politician will again bring up a video game tax and I will strike at them with equal ferocity.

Hillary has been vocal about her dissatisfaction with the videogame industry and has spouted her fancifal notions before. So I don't think I'm stretching to believe that there may be some truth to this story.

Could someone enlighten me as to what a 'child advocacy program' would entail? I can see part of the argument for taxing it in a practical sense. Smoking and drinking are luxury goods, unnecessary but enjoyed by many but with detrimental effects. Video games can be seen in the same light. It seems the argument that 'video games make you violent' is much stronger in the states than here in the UK which might give her grounds for seeing the games as detrimental.

Also, your point about taxing bmx's and baseball is illogical and i think shows your mising what she might be trying to do. BMXing and baseball are exercise. They are good for you (note no detrimental effects). Perhaps given the obesity levels we keep hearing about it would be good to promote outdoors activities over video games.

That being said it does seem a stupid suggestion despite these minor positives I can find with it.

More kids die playing baseball and riding bikes than from video games, y'know.

Interesting. Do you have any stats on that? I'd love to see the study.

I play me a fair amount of videogame and i don't really see much of a problem with taxing them provided the tax is relatively small.

You got your lead lined boxer shorts on?

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You know, most states have a sales tax. I think that should be enough.

Can't they tax guns or SUVs or cell phones :)

Wait, why would you not mind video games being taxed? Why should there be an extra tax on a media good?

If they tax video games, they need to tax all media, which, I think we can all agree is a stupid idea.

It's a stupid attempt to villify the gaming industry by putting a vice tax on it like tobacco. I really wish people making rules regarding media, information and science had a fraction of a clue what the fuck is going on instead of thinking that every new media leads to an increase in violence and that every new technology is an affront to god's word. Rest assured that if both were true we'd be long dead and long condemned to hell anyway.

Open letter to politicians:

Take your tube (not truck)-like internet and shove it up your diabetes-ridden- because-we-can't-do-stem-cell-research ass.

Love,

Dan

P.S. Global warming can be conclusively shown to be caused by a decline in the number of pirates in the world!

Ahhh...a follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I see. ;)

I wouldn't mind chipping in an extra five dollars for every game i bought if it meant that the schools in my state would get more money. Then again, i don't generally mind paying more for things if i feel like paying more for things might possibly have a net positive effect in the long run.

What if they did tax all media? What if there was like a $0.10 tax on every movie ticket, cd, video game, etc? Fuck, that would be a shitload of money that would probably only be missed by those who are already ideologically opposed to taxes in the first place.

Video games promote originality and imagination. BMX can kill you, if you fall off or attempt a stupid stunt like all those "professionals". Baseballs are equally, if not more deadly should something go awry. I think the same things are true for video games that things have to go wrong for video games to be bad. Baseball and BMX not being detrimental? Nah, don't think so.

Bikes
Baseball
and

Video games

I was unable to find an article that listed any statistics in regards to game-related deaths. There have been occurances of individuals over-exhausting themselves, and an isolated case of game-provoked murder in Shanghai. All I could find in the US were a few occurances of lawyers looking for a scapegoat, though my article-finding skills aren't the best :)

Just food for thought.

Figures.

Remember income tax started relatively small too.

And look at all the horrible things it's responsible for! Damn you public roads and interstate highway system!!! Damn you powerful military!!!!! Damn you local emergency services!!!! Damn you heavily subsidized air transportation system!!!

Damn you horribly wasteful spending due to a lack of accountability, I think is where we're going with this.

If that were really the case we'd be complaining about wasteful politicians and not taxation.

You can't complain about both?

Yes, you can. It's just that it seems disingenuous to complain about one while attributing your criticism to the other. It is really unclear what ustwo specifically meant with his comments since he didn't really elaborate in his post. I assumed he was referring to his belief that taxation == thievery. But maybe frossbyte has his finger more accurately on the pulse of ustwo. Even so, all this says nothing to change the fact that taxes have been used to greatly benefit everybody in america. It seems like nothing more than logical tomfoolery to me to attempt to claim that taxes are bad because politicians are corrupt and wasteful.

But then again, i'm not even sure that's what anybody is claiming. All i am doing is trying to defend statements i made in response to ustwo's vague statement to two other people with their own set of preconceived notions about the subject.

I'm not sure either if that was anyone's argument, but it seems perfectly logical to claim that taxes are bad because politicians are corrupt and wasteful. Perhaps not as some abstract idea, but definitely taxes in reality. If they can't handle the money they already have correctly, where would the logic be in giving them more?

In the parlence of our times, quoted for truth.

Nall politicians are corrupt and wasteful and even if they were you could not reasonably assume that they wouldn't use more money for something good.

In any system, waste and corruption are just some of the inevitable cost of doing business. There will never be a system of human self government that doesn't contain waste and corruption. It is naive to claim that more taxes are automatically bad because the politicians won't be as cautious and ethical as you would like in spending those taxes. Starving the beast doesn't really work. In my state they're attempting to starve the beast and all they've really accomplished is the underfunding of local services like the fire department and the police department as well as the department of transportation among others.

I suppose now that the Constitution has more or less been shat on to the point of illegibility by the Bush administration, they can do whatever the hell they want. The tax may well be coming.

The US just needs more Jews. They're great accountants.