Short Nerd Chief

The Sierra Club has proposed a lot of dumb things, but the No Child Left Inside tax on TVs and video games is about the dumbest:

A coalition of twelve environmental organizations in New Mexico has initiated a new strategy to help get American kids back outdoors. The Environmental Alliance of New Mexico is renewing its call for a one-percent sales tax on televisions and video games to fund outdoor education programs. The tax idea, initiated by the Sierra Club, would raise an estimated $4 million a year, to fund programs aimed at giving school kids an outdoors education. “We believe it is such a nominal tax that consumers won’t feel it too much, especially if they are educated about where that money goes,” said Michael Casaus, the New Mexico youth representative of the Sierra Club.

The number of ways in which this is a dumb idea is mind-boggling, so let’s just make a list:

• A 1% sales tax would have an effect on consumer demand indistinguishable from zero. A $600 PS3 would be $606. A $50 game would be $50.50. Even a $1000 HDTV would only go up to $1010.  I have no idea what the elasticity of demand on luxury electronics is, but it’s certainly not such that a fifty cent price increase would matter.
• Sales taxes are an incredibly inefficient way to change consumer behavior, even if changing consumer behavior was the government’s business. Which it’s not.  The excise tax on cigarettes is very high, but that hasn’t done much to reduce smoking. Other things have, but not the tax on cigarettes. Cleveland funded its baseball stadium and arena on the backs of smokers and drinkers.  Luckily for the city, the increased taxes did almost nothing to reduce demand.
• Game playing and exercise are not mutually exclusive.  Fat kids are fat kids because they eat junk and don’t exercise, not because they play video games. Turn off the Wii and go outside, already.
• Even if a 1% tax would keep a parent from buying Super Mario Galaxy (which it won’t), do we really think the couch potato will go to the park instead of just playing his other games twice as much?

This sort of thing will have no impact on couch potatodom, no impact on the video game market and no impact on childhood obesity levels. It will however, accomplish the primary objective of the Sierra Club, which is to get more money for the Sierra Club.

[via Engadget]