PJ Vogt

One feature of that newfound salience is Trump's fund.

Another though is lots more conversation and policy ideas aimed at changing American tax policy.

Jesse is famously not an optimist, not an optimist, just a grouch who works all day trying to make an impossible world better.

But I wanted to know what Jesse sees when he looks out now at the current landscape of American tax policy.

But do you feel like—like, I've just been surprised.

I feel conflicted.

about how to think about what's happening right now in America, where I feel like when I look at the conversations around taxes, I see attempts to tax the wealthy more competently, which they seem to evade very easily.

And I see a general feeling where the reaction almost seems to be like, well, just like, rather than

the wealthy should pay more, billionaires should pay more.

I feel like where I'm actually seeing energy is, well, maybe nobody should pay taxes.

And like, I'm not saying like I enjoy tax day, but it's a place where I feel like civic.

And I've been, I feel like what I see, like no tax on tips or whatever.

It feels like it's just like, we're just sort of starting to arrange carve out after carve out after carve out.

Rather, like the feeling is like almost a kind of like nihilism.

That's where I feel like I pick up when I read what I see.

Yeah, I think what is strange about this era is, like, for the people who support Trump, but also for the people who resist him or dislike him or just don't vote for him, the way where everyone seems to be continuously mirroring each other is to say, like, the system's rigged, the institutions are crumbling, let's make it worse.

And that's, like, I don't know what you do with that.

I just notice it and it worries me.

Yeah, and you see him kind of trying to build, like, if right now so much of politics is what can you make legible on social media, on the internet, the thing that I see him trying to make legible is functioning government.

Like, the thing I see him doing pretty often is to be like, here are city workers fixing potholes.