(Reproduced for an article I wrote about a year and a half ago for another blog I write; I think it’s appropriate here. And I’m tired)

I came with a term the other day as a corollary to the Windows tax, which is, ha ha, the “Apple tax”. According to Google (and not surprisingly) the term Apple tax has been around for a while. I don’t know what everybody else means by it, but what I’m going for is that you can’t (according to the license agreement, anyway) run OS X on a non-Apple computer. In this sense, the Apple tax is the amount I have to pay for the hardware in order to use the software, although I don’t actually want or need said hardware. It’s a testament to Apple’s developers, designers and marketing team that I would actually consider buying an Apple in order to get OS X.

Now, I quite understand what I assume to be Apple’s business reasons for doing this, and that if I used OS X on a non-Apple branded computer, I’d likely have all sorts of trouble. I’m going to deem these points irrelevant though, because the discussion of Apple is, for this article, illustrative. I shall now depart from computers and move into politics.

I’m in favor of a smaller federal government, or more precisely, a more constrained federal government. The US Constitution’s definition of how this would work is the best I’ve seen. Fortunately for lobbyists, politicians are adept are reinterpreting the laws or even constitutions that their predecessors created, no matter how exactly that law or constitution forbids the newly favored interpretation. Among the consequences of the current structure of our federal government is the prevalence of Apple Taxes.

That is to say, each of us ends up paying a lot of money to the government, and get only a small amount of “what we need” in return. We pay taxes for the organization to facilitate interstate commerce, for a federal judicial system, for our armed forces, for coordinated environmental protection (read: less pollution so I can breathe). Those I consider good taxes. They are often not used well, but in principle, they’re not inherently Apple taxes. Instead, they get extended by this law and that into having massive Apple taxes.

For example, the federal government building an interstate highway system. Fine (well, actually, I’m not sold on the idea, but that’s another article). The infamous bridge to nowhere. Apple tax. And this example illustrates an important point about Apple taxes: for some people, they’re not. For the people in Alaska directly affected by that bridge, it wouldn’t have been an Apple tax. For me in Oklahoma, it clearly is.

This sample illustrates what I’m am going to designate a Type 1 Federal Apple Tax. These are Apple taxes that occur because the federal government is doing what the states ought to be doing. I’m assuming the reason this has happened is more or less your good old power struggles. Such spending is good for one or two states and detrimental for the rest. In some cases, things just have to go through the federal government but I think those instances a far less prevalent than current federal spending suggests. I would prefer lower federal spending and taxes and higher state spending/taxes, because then I can have more say in how my taxes are used, by virtue of being a higher percentage of Oklahoma’s population that of the US population.

A Type 2 Federal Apple Tax is spending that is an Apple tax throughout the federation. In general I think they happen because of 1) the interests of a few powerful parties, or 2) because of politics getting away from the politicians, or 3) both. I think the classic example for this decade of a type 2 is the current war in Iraq. I’m talking about the moral value of the war. I’m not awake enough to open that can of worms. I’m talking about the Iraq war as an Apple Tax, a much more expensive piece that I didn’t want, tacked on to something I did value.

Declaring war on Al Qaeda (which I don’t think we ever actually did) makes perfect sense to me after the 9/11 attacks. This organization had declared war on the US and attacked us. Yes, some of the members have some valid complaints, and I sure wish we would try to address those, but I am in favor of a war against Al Qaeda (which, again, as best I can tell, we’ve never started). Lacking that, the war in Afghanistan was sensible. I’m not sure about its particulars but I’m trying to make some sort of point here.

But then, boom, Iraq war. Apple Tax. Do not want. So how did we get there. Politics and some special interests. That war could not (I think) have been justified without the proceeding “War on Terra’“, but over time it became an acceptable tax because the politicians presented it as inseparable from any any action against Al Qaeda. It’s okay for a commercial entity to play those games. It’s a problem when the federal government does so.

Solutions? Other than returning power to the states? Nope. I’m merely using this concept as another way to consider various issues in modern politics.