United States Vice President, Joe Biden, sees nothing wrong with taxing violent video games. A sin tax is in the works for violent video games.
Throughout history different forms of entertainment have been blamed for what goes wrong in the world. In the 1920’s, ragtime and jazz were the blame and why the youth was corrupted back in that day. In the 1960’s comic books were said to rotten your brain. In the 1980’s, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) was formed to, in a nutshell, sensor and label “unfit” music. In the early 1990’s, three men were wrongfully tried and convicted for a murder they didn’t commit. What these three fellas enjoyed in their free time was listen to heavy metal music, and read Stephen King books.
So, now, we get to my point. What we are seeing in the early 2010’s now is video games are the new form of entertainment that gets the blame when something drastic happens. Unfortunately, there have horrific tragedies this past year in Auroa, Colorado and most recently the Sandy Hook shooting. And, unfortunately, people need something to blame, and of course, politicians, the media, they don’t want to put blame on the individual. Or an organization that aligns their back pockets with money. No, they can’t do that. So, what’s a form of entertainment that’s popular and has nothing to do with them? That’s where video games, and violent video games in particular come into play.
The United States Vice President, Joe Biden, has mentioned that he sees “no restriction on the ability to do that, there’s no legal reason why they couldn’t” tax violent entertainment. Obviously, there is. The First Amendment protects video games in that why, because it is art, it is a freedom of speech. But, without trying to get to political, it’s obvious that over the years the law of the land doesn’t really get followed. So, the Vice President of the United States saying something like this isn’t the least bit surprising.
I’ve mentioned this many times, and other video game writers have beat this to death, but these politicians continue to bring it up. It’s so silly that these topics have come up pretty regularly when there are many other important issues in the world. But, again, video games are an easy target because video games, or rather, video game companies aren’t buying politicians. Politicians aren’t gaining from video games, so they have nothing to lose by trying to ban them or tax them.
Now, will this purposed “sin tax” on video games go through? Probably not. There have been a few bills over the past few years trying to restrict violent video games, ban violent video games, putting a label on video games much in the way a label is on cigarettes. So, more than likely, I wouldn’t think this will go through. It’s just the idea and that this is actually talked about is the most frustrating thing about it. Slapping a “sin tax” on violent video games is just a ridiculous notion. Buying a violent video game isn’t endorsing mass murders, and it doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy.
Just have a little common sense. Look at the statistics. Murders and crime rate have gone down as video games continue to get bigger and bigger. Look at Japan, look at South Korea. Two countries that consume violent media, that love video games, aren’t going around shooting each other up. Video games aren’t the problem.
