What If Taxes

What if taxes, the budget, were decided by the individual?

Suppose every April, each tax payer was required to fill out a checklist- budget of where his or her taxes went.

A penny to this, a quarter to that.

Instead of just electing people who make the choices and use the budget to mess with each other. Maybe we'd find out who really wants to build a wall and spend their tax dollars on it, and who would rather see their money go to NASA or park services. So people would have more power because they would control the purse strings.

This is how investments work. You give money, you get a vote. But taxes is being required to give money and hoping YOUR share of the funds didn't get spent on something you oppose. A more accurate representation of values. So if I want my tax dollars to fund "A," but feel morally opposed to funding "B," I can know that my money hasn't been allocated to that which I oppose.

Why not give money to A myself? Because the whole "tax-deductible" idea has fine print. Home ownership, for example. And a different form to file. Plus, I'm talking about money that was never going to be mine to keep,  the 30% or so that gets taken out of a paycheck.