We must fight hard that we don't need to pay that tax any more - money which flows in large sums directly to the military/industrial complex.
But most likely, all this data would be of great interest for criminals? What about the cost of fraud, crime, identity theft? Is it better to have unencrypted phones stolen by criminals in exchange for easier and cheaper surveillance?
I'd think Apples encryption isn't mostly targeted to stop law enforcement and surveillance but more to stop misuse of lost and stolen phones. In addition, if able to implant zero-day exploits, any attacker can bypath any encryption - or he might just target the transmission or the other side of a sent/received secret. Most information isn't produced on an iPhone to sit there forever: either it is received from a server / second device or it is intended to be transmitted to a receiver. So, an encrypted phone isn't really stopping surveillance.
As such, the best option is to make it so expensive to carry out mass surveillance, their only choice is to be selective about who they target and to focus on specific individuals rather than a billion people in general.
The cost should be drastically increased in all regards: time, electricity, water, monetary, etc.
It's very likely this will happen. The NSA was sitting at the ultimate sweet-spot in history, but windows like that are only open for extremely brief amounts of time. It will close and there is nothing that the NSA can do to stop it.
And the idea of reducing the cost for intelligence agencies to surveil us to save money is an interesting one. While I agree that paying more taxes for a dubiously useful "service" is bad, I disagree that the right response is to reduce that marginal cost--i.e. be more transparent in the face of government surveillance. Under a regime of high marginal costs, I'd like to believe that the NSA would simply be more selective in its targets, rather than be successful in securing additional funding.