To find out how much money Jason earned, we have the following information based on the given table:
- Jason's earnings: \( x \)
- Gary's earnings: \( 3x - 4 \)
- David's earnings: \( 2x + 8 \)
Since it's stated that Gary and David earned the same amount of money, we can set their earnings equal to each other:
\[ 3x - 4 = 2x + 8 \]
Now, we will solve this equation for \( x \).
Step 1: Eliminate \( 2x \) from both sides:
\[ 3x - 2x - 4 = 8 \]
This simplifies to:
\[ x - 4 = 8 \]
Step 2: Add 4 to both sides to isolate \( x \):
\[ x = 8 + 4 \]
This gives us:
\[ x = 12 \]
Now that we have the value of \( x \), we can determine how much Jason earned:
\[ \text{Money earned by Jason} = x = 12 \]
Step 3: We can verify if \( Gary \) and \( David \) indeed earn the same amount by substituting \( x \) back into their equations.
For Gary:
\[ \text{Gary's earnings} = 3x - 4 = 3(12) - 4 = 36 - 4 = 32 \]
For David:
\[ \text{David's earnings} = 2x + 8 = 2(12) + 8 = 24 + 8 = 32 \]
Since both Gary's and David's earnings equal \( 32 \), our calculations are consistent with the given information.
Thus, the amount of money that Jason earned is:
\[ \boxed{12} \]
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