Do Americans Really Serve ‘Indentured Servitude’ to Apple Inc. (AAPL)?

According to this list, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is 17th in the Fortune 500 in terms of total revenues generated. The tech giant made close to $157 billion in revenue in its 2012 fiscal year, and Wall Street is predicting that, on average, it will flirt with $200 billion by the end of FY2013.

Why is this important?

Well, for starters, it can shed some insight into the reasoning behind a recent story that came from Reuters contributor Chris Taylor, that discusses an “Apple Tax” in the U.S. Unlike the traditional definition of a tax, Taylor defines this term as a payment that households are willing to pay, saying that “Americans are shelling out big bucks annually to outfit the entire household with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) products,” to the tune of $444 per household, according to Katy Huberty of Morgan Stanley.

Taylor points out that this total was much higher than the $295 figure that households paid in 2010. Even more intriguingly, he mentions that “[i]f Apple rolls out its own HDTV, as expected, Huberty sees annual Apple spending by households doubling, to $888 by 2015.”  Now, obviously, we’re talking about averages here. Still, considering that the median household income in 2011 was $50,502, and it’s very interesting to think that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) could receive 1.5-2.0% of Americans’ income in the not too distant future.

Here’s where things get weird.

Well, for starters, this information is nothing that most investors didn’t already know, this data just hasn’t been presented in this particular fashion before. We’re all aware of Apple’s massive market cap, and most know that the company is a mammoth on the revenue side as well.

In his article, Taylor presents his facts well, but then goes a bit overboard in his assessment of the “Apple Tax,” calling Americans “slaves to the devices,” saying that one family he interviewed had an “indentured servitude to Apple.”

If you don’t see a problem with this way of thinking, we’ll break it down for you.

Remember above when we mentioned that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the seventeenth largest Fortune 500 company in terms of total revenues? Here are some companies that are higher on that list: AT&T, JP Morgan Chase, Ford, and Berkshire Hathaway.