Texas Gubernatorial candidate wants 50% tax on "violent games"
Are you a Texan gamer? You might want to watch this carefully. The positive spin of Republican gubernatorial candidate Star Locke's proposal is the elimination of property taxes. However, as any Economics professor will tell you (much to the chagrin of his or her students), there is no such thing as a free lunch - so what's the catch?
According to the Amarillo (registration required), Locke would propose a 10-percent tax on soft drinks, a $10,000-per-abortion tax, and a 50-percent tax on violent video games. Of course, violent games is a very subjective term - that's why he proposes a 10-member board that will determine which game is violent enough. "Once it's reviewed," Locke says, "the tax would be levied swiftly."
In other words, this committee can tax any game it wants, just so long as they can all agree (can't be that hard to find 10 like-minded non-gamers). Locke is very clear about his intentions: "we need to tax things we don't want and...not tax things that you want to encourage." He has seen violent game legislation fail repeatedly, so now he is attempting to do away with violent games using simple economics - pretty clever, to be honest.
Locke is running against incumbent Rick Perry for the GOP nomination and the chances of him winning the primary are slim. Still, Texan gamers, you've been warned: now, go register to vote.
[via 1up]
[Update: Added a line explaining the possibilities of Mr. Locke being elected. Also, you may notice your comment disappear - I hid about half of the submitted comments so far because they either 1) were completely off topic (discussing politics and what-not) or 2) flamed Texas or another Joystiq reader. This is a large issue, but let's focus on the gaming aspect and on being civil.]
