I live in one of the most highly taxed countries on planet earth and what my taxes mostly do is go from my pocket to either an unsustainable pay-as-you-go defined benefit pensions regime that nobody wants to reform into a market based defined contribution regime since that would make apparent the underlying weakness of our economy or the money goes to structurally poor regions where it disappears forever because nobody wants to take hard measures to reform governance in those regions. sorry to break your bubble but high taxation is not inherently good or bad, depends wholly on the governance, and the governance tends to the bad