So the Sierra Club and others in New Mexico wants to push an initiative called “Leave No Child Inside”. That is fantastic! I love the idea of an initiative that will build a love of the outdoors and of an active lifestyle for an increasingly sedentary – and overweight – population. So where does the money come from? A 1% tax on video games, TV’s and associated hardware. Oh. In other words, we are going to incentivize young kids by taxing their parents. Huh?

Since this is a New Mexico issue it isn’t really relevant on a broad scale, but the issues are germane to any general discussion of kids and video games. You can read the summary article here which points to two separate articles from local New Mexico sites.

The bottom line is this – New Mexico sees that 80% of kids in the state live very close to a State Park, yet only 10% of them have ever been to one. I can’t cite statistics from other places, but I know that stuff I have read from the northeast is not all that different. This is troubling, not only because it means that a wonderful set of natural resources that have been preserved are going underutilized, but also because of the disturbing increasing trends in childhood obesity. The weight issue is troubling itself for many reasons, but the linkage to health issues makes it more of an urgent problem.

The Sierra Club and others draw a direct line between these issues, and paint it with an ink drawn from TV, video games, and other non-active indoor activities. Again, I don’t think that there is general argument that the lifestyle trend in recent years has been towards less activity in general and less outdoor activity in specific. I support any initiative that works to get kids – and people in general – out to our national and state parks and into nature in general … it would certainly give a greater appreciation of nature and our impact upon it.

But while I applaud the general idea of the initiative, I have a few serious issues with this in specific and things like it in general:
– It takes an automatic ‘indoor is bad, outdoor is good’ stance … understandable given the focus of the group. But it also takes a ‘new is bad, old is good’ stance because the tax is aimed at video games, TV’s, and ‘other similar devices’. My family sat around the table playing Axis & Allies the other night; we were all reading on the couch last week during a snowstorm – where is the tax on those things? We were clearly at least as sedentary as when we were playing Carnival Games last weekend. It also points directly at ‘couch potato’ activities, particularly high-cost items. Imagine the impact of healthy eating and portion control on childhood obesity – we added up the total fat and sodium from my son’s double cheesburger ‘mighty kids meal’ he got at a birthday party last week and it was more than two adults should eat in a day … and that was a single meal, not including dessert!
– Living in Massachusetts, I recall specifically how the Mass Pike tolls were supposed to go away once the bond used to pay for the road was paid off since road maintenance came from a different fund. Of course, the bond was paid, but the tolls didn’t go away – because the government needed the money. And in the interim they had added a 50-cent gas tax to fund road repairs through the state. My point – taxes and fees get started with the best of intentions but since everything goes into a non-protected general fund all of the that intent gets lost somewhere. Look at it this way – would you fund your kids’ college education out of your checking account?
– Quick quiz – ask your 6-year old why it costs more to buy the same $49.99 Super Mario Galaxy in Massachusetts than in New Hampshire. I have used it as a great way to teach percentages to kids, but the bottom line is this – the 1% tax would be completely invisible to them. Tax premiums like that tend to be invisible to consumers in general, which brings up a question – is the intent of the tax to make kids think twice before buying a game and perhaps just play on the swings instead; or is it an attempt to ride the tails of the booming game market and increase their own slush fund?

As I said, I am all for real initiatives that will help with encouraging people to live a balanced lifestyle and be more healthy in general. The reason I make a big deal of it here is that in this political season it is way too easy to find a nice target like video games to scapecoat the evils befalling our kids and pretend that a new tax to add to state coffers will solve these woes.

Tags: Misc