Obviously, this was supposed to be the job of the person you elected.

But in 2024 we definitely have the technology to let people vote on smaller units of issues that they care about.

I would be completely in support of people self-allocating their taxes as long as (1) the distribution still had to add up to 100% so you can’t under contribute and (2) government offices capped their income and redistributed excess to the general funds instead of letting some feel-good departments waste money they didn’t need but were allocated.

How?

Russia invades the Ukraine. Ukraine defends itself. Ukraine's allies, incl. the USA, send weapons. None of the allies, incl. the USA, fight in Ukraine or Russia.

I'm afraid your independent thinking has formed a prejudiced opinion. George Carlin would not be proud.

Ukraine isn’t our ally. That’s a silly sentiment. Ukraine is a developing country wholly comparable to say Zambia or Namibia. Our interests just happen to align this way this time around.

You know what, I agree.

Ukraine is a highly developed country, in some ways more than the U.S. Its people are certainly way more educated, on average.

If you can't get that part right, then I doubt you have much to tell us about the context of the war or whether Ukraine is an ally or not.

My wife's side of the family is entirely Russian, so I have some basic knowledge on the subject.

And they speak decidedly against your claims:

https://hdr.undp.org/system/files/documents/hdr2020.pdf

Ukraine's development ranking is classed as 'High', while Namibia and Zambia are both classed as 'Medium'.

My wife's side of the family is entirely Russian, so I have some basic knowledge on the subject

I have direct knowledge of the country as well. Your wife can say whatever she wants to say.

Yet you know they're out there somewhere, and that they speak for themselves.

A few counties away, the library district said without a tax increase, they’ll have to shut down. “No new taxes” carried the day. Library shut down. Now folks are howling. And again it’s the non-voting kids that suffer.

If this is the behavior of folks about issues affecting their neighbors, in their own town, I’m not too optimistic what sort of support we could see for any kind of longer-term issue, especially if it isn’t atop the media cycle.

So I don't pay Israel's defense budget, but that money is reallocated evenly to everything else.

I find it hard to believe a meaningful number of people would opt out of libraries and schools assuming their overall tax burden is unchanged.

I might be too pessimistic though, I tend towards liking the idea but I'm concerned about the changes it could cause.

Empty nesters or childless people will funnel their tax money to things like parks, fire trucks, and other things.

Members of Congress often propose things like this because it sounds good but in practice it's meaningless.

Suppose that Democrats don't want to pay for bombs and Republicans don't want to pay for makework jobs, so they both say they don't want their tax money to be used for this. Then the government takes the money from Democrats they didn't spend on bombs and uses it to make up the shortfall in the makework jobs programs and takes the money Republicans didn't spend on makework jobs and uses it to make up the shortfall in the military, and nothing changes at all.

The only way it could actually do something is if you got the money back you didn't want spent on that thing, instead of letting the government spend it on something else. But then most people would do that with large chunks of government spending because they'd rather the money than the programs.