Taxation.

Rising and lowering is a matter of perspective.

Some like to look at taxes as a percentage of overall income and compare that by year, it does tend to be higher compared to your grandparents if you do this. Some like to look at individual rates, which might not account for inflation (I believe I had an example yesterday about rates of inflation vs rates of increase of the various bands at which you get taxed* and noted that the band technically dropped if inflation was accounted for) and might also be tricky as not everybody buys the same things**.

*most places in the world do a progressive tax system. That is to say up to a certain amount you pay small (or nothing), up to another cutoff you pay more, at another you pay more still. Note this does not mean you pay more if you go over a certain amount on the whole lot as some erroneously believe.
For instance if say between 0 and 10000 you pay 0% and 10001 and 30000 you pay 20% then by earning 30000 you don't pay 30000x0.2 but actually 20000x0.2 as the first 10000 here is tax free in this case (though the US does charge a token sum for the lower cutoffs). https://taxfoundation.org/historical-income-tax-rates-brackets/

**though average wage, average grocery basket, car/transport, housing costs and such like can get fairly close for the vast majority of the population.

Tax on fizzy drinks can be one of a few things.
1) Sales tax. Many places (though not all) will charge this as a means to increase tax. In the US then city, county and state might charge some, don't think there is a federal sales tax on anything most people usually buy. Elsewhere in the world there are similar concepts (Europe usually does VAT aka value added tax, which is subtly different in a few ways and also usually included in the price rather than figured out at the till).
2) Sin tax. Fizzy sugar water makes you fat which costs healthcare, productivity and more besides. It is noted if you make something more expensive then sometimes people switch to other things or cut down on them which might then help stop. Various places in the US trial this sort of thing but I don't know what goes for it. Cigarettes and alcohol are usually the examples of this sort of thing though.
3) In some places there might be a deposit on bottles. Return them to get the deposit back. https://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/state-beverage-container-laws.aspx , though those are rather lower than 50 cents so probably not that unless you are buying a multipack or something.

As far as fuss goes. Various things for this one. Whatever projects the government does, whatever handouts they give, whatever problems they try to solve, whatever things they try to build, whatever services they aim to provide, whatever people they employ... this is all done in your name as a tax payer. If they screw it up, waste it, spend it on something you find morally abhorrent, take it for reasons/at levels you don't think justified and so forth then you might find yourself upset. This can also vary with your philosophy on the nature of government. Some want their government to provide basically everything for them (healthcare, childcare, schooling, fire, police, military, disaster, roads, trains, transport, libraries...), safety nets and whatever else. On the other end of the spectrum then some would have governments enforce the rule of law and the security of the country's borders where everything else is basically private. Naturally those two extremes do not get along too well and even those in the middle can have quite stark differences of opinion (free university vs just primary and secondary for instance, or free university if it is STEM but not if it is not for splits within free education and the nature thereof), and you also have the third flavour of what your government does on the world stage -- most governments will try to promote their country's products (by fair means and foul), their country for a holiday (if you have ever seen an advert saying come visit country/state it is probably being paid for by taxes at some level), try to ensure security of the world or their local area beyond their borders, try to promote laws like their country and more besides. Not doing anything is referred to as isolationist, and many are predicting the US to go into that cycle.

There are way more than the two taxes covered above though, and you*** won't necessarily be paying all of them all of the time depending upon what you are doing.
***or your employer -- payroll tax, social security tax, unemployment tax... all these might be being paid by your employer on your behalf. That is to say cost of employing someone is more than just hourly salary x hours worked + whatever insurance and that effectively comes out of your salary.

If you allow taxes to be collected you will attract parasitic entities that will suck the live out of you until you shake them off or die. So always try to avoid paying taxes or fight for whats right. There is no alternative unfortunatly. Making this subject more complicated only confuses things. Don't let other take advantage of you, if you let them pass with their injustices you will soon find yourself in a very unfortuante position. Take care