Who likes to pay when there's nothing in return?
Reading your post sounded like you were talking about my country, i am from Nigeria by the way and most of what you said is also the situation in my country. Nigeria is blessed with natural resources, but where does all the government revenue go to? It is spent on paying politicians all sorts of allowances and paying for their luxury, you would be amazed at how much legislators earn in my country when you compare it to the minimum wage.
That said, i don't have a problem with paying my taxes, but i will feel a lot better if they were used to improve the standard of living to an acceptable level.
Actually many can relate with that. But as for the resources, I think yeah that Nigeria can excel over the others. It is not surprising anymore on why they are still poor but if only their governments are on their right minds, they can easily surpass some countries.
Politicians should not be given by a good salary if they are not doing their jobs well but this is also the reason on why they can kill only to get on their positions. About minimum wage, I think the employer are still free to increase it if they really wanted to but the problem is that many of them are also stingy. They are close to those kind of governments we are talking about earlier.