Originally Posted by
Kris Pigna @ 1UP
In case you haven't heard, newspapers across the country are dying -- both as a result of rapidly decreasing revenue and increasingly stiff competition from digital alternatives. As a result, the Federal Trade Commission is holding a series of discussions to explore potential options to help save print journalism in the digital age, and one idea they're mulling may cost you more money the next time you want to buy some gaming hardware: a five percent tax on all consumer electronics (via GamesIndustry.biz).
The idea is that the money raised through the consumer electronics tax -- which would be applied to such products as game consoles, smart phones, computers, and digital cameras -- would be used to subsidize the print journalism industry, particularly newspapers. The FTC believes this could bring in as much as $4 billion in potential subsidies.
But before you immediately start throwing boxes of tea into the nearest body of water in protest, note that this is not yet an official FTC proposal -- it was raised "solely for the purposes of discussion," and is only a small part of a number of other ideas to help revitalize the newspaper industry (all of the FTC's ideas can be seen in this .pdf document; the consumer electronics tax suggestion appears on page 21) . Other ideas include postal subsidies, a two percent tax on broadcast advertising, and direct tax breaks for journalists.
Beyond the obvious connection of Internet news siphoning away potential newspaper readers, the connection between consumer electronics in general and print media goes unexplained in the document.
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