Sadly governments need at least some cash. So, if you want to live in a country with a government, the populace needs to pay tax in some form (through some combination of taxing individuals, businesses, and/or resources). Lets assume you live in a country that requires taxes in some form. If you live in a country with no taxes of any form, then your question is pointless, since your government has no surpluses. And you can leave this thread in that case. If not, read on.
Now you have three options: (a) tax more when the economy is doing well and less when the economy is doing poorly, (b) tax more when the economy is doing poorly and less when the economy is doing well, or (c) try to magically tax the same in all cases. I'll toss out option (c) since no government is that perfect and that quickly responding to flawlessly adjust tax rates that magically generate the same tax in a poor economy and a booming economy.
So now, which is better, option (a) or option (b)?
I will propose that option (b) is the worse choice. Why? Because raising more tax revenue when the economy is doing poorly makes that recession even worse. I personally can't come up with a logical reason to make recessions worse. True, the booms with even lower taxes would be really booming, but the recessions are really low in this case. You essentially have a bi-polar economy. The government's odd choice to tax more when people/businesses have less just magnifies the swings. These wild swings makes planning worse for businesses and that even further magnifies the boom/bust cycle. A worse boom/bust cycle leads to more government spending to recover from those huge stresses, which means more taxes, more spending, more waste.
What are you left with? The best option is a government that taxes more in good times and less in bad times (option a). Luckily, this is the default behavior of almost all tax systems that I've ever heard of. Incomes go up, profits go up, resource usage goes up, and thus tax revenues go up. The effect is that in bad times the taxes go down making the recessions less painful. Also in good times taxes naturally go up, which takes off the edge of wild boom cycles. The net effect is that the economy has less severe booms/busts. That makes business planning better, people more confident, and the government better able to cut spending since it has less need for safety nets or bailouts (thus lower taxes overall). These all let the economy grow faster.
Now suppose the government has a long-term plan that cuts spending to the bare bones (I assume you think this is a good idea). In that case, spending cuts even further are severely harmful or impossible. Also, suppose that long-term this is a roughly balanced budget (taxes are as low as possible to sustain government). Again, I assume you would find that to be a good thing.
What is the only possible outcome of this ideal low-spending, low-tax, non-wild-swings tax, that is balanced in the long term? There would be slight surpluses in good times when tax revenues are higher and slight deficits in bad times when tax revenues are lower.
Basically, if you actually got everything you publically stated that you wanted on this forum, you'd be required to have government surpluses in good times and government deficits in bad times. That is where government surpluses are a good thing. Surpluses smooth out the economy, make planning easier, and lets governments drop spending on recovery from busts/bailouts/safety nets/etc. (which leads to lower taxes). All these are good things, and all REQUIRE occasional surpluses in the long run.
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