Well what happens is, lower taxes means multiple things, such as ensuring the money is actually spent in the economy, buying food, goods, services instead of centrally stored in the treasury where it stays for a long time until it's being used for big projects that only a few big corporations have a use for. You're able to provide most government services with basic taxes, especially when the economy is supported by a strong middle class. Third world countries may have low taxes, but it only benefits the top 1% (or less) because they don't have a middle class, serving only as safe havens for huge corporations.
Your money can go much further when you're able to spend it for your own goals, the more money you saved up the bigger investments you can make. This also results in economic growth, which can lead to more jobs, meaning less people dependant on government. In time, as its a process, you'll find that, combined with the other things I mentioned, come out much stronger than continuing the way things go now.
At this point most (new) taxes are redistribution of wealth, which especially with big bureaucratic government causes most of the redistributed wealth spent off-shore or only to a select few (such as special providers of food and services for the royal families in the middle ages)
That's my view on it at least.
It's really too bad your view is based on out-dated financial ideology rather than hard economic lessons.
Fact: some of the so-called welfare states with reasonable tax frameworks maintain the highest standards of living in the world, well beyond the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia.
As for the middle class, if you'd care to look at US financial demographics sometime, the middle class doesn't really exist in the traditional sense. Lower-middle classes lump together, while the upper class outpaces them both by leaps and bounds. Of course, the upper class doesn't really pay taxes, so the tax burden for the country is paid by the lower and middle classes (corporations, despite having a higher tax rate in the US than other G8 nations, actually pay very little tax due to the notorious loopholes and deductions in the US tax code).
This neo-con ideology of low taxes is laudable provided governments collect enough to pay for government expenditure programs. The United States does not. Several Canadian provinces do not. The obsession with low taxes does everyone a disservice - instead, if all tax loopholes (read: deductions) were eliminated, tax rates were maintained or lowered slightly for the lower and middle classes, raised for the upper classes, and lowered but reformed (again, deductions and loopholes gone) for corporations, governments would have a much fairer tax system.
Low taxes is not a panacea for the economy. A fair tax system, with governments collecting enough revenue to pay their bills, allow people to get the help they need, and spend to support economic growth when necessary is a good start, though
