The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center is holding a series of online conversations on tax and fiscal policy in today’s economy. The discussions take place every other Thursday afternoon and feature varying perspectives on the historic economic challenges facing the United States and the world and the best ways to address them.

This week’s guest is David Wessel, director of the Brookings Institution Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. He’s the author of Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age, a new book that details how Opportunity Zones came to be included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the implications of that decision. Opportunity Zones created large tax breaks for investors in designated communities but have largely failed to achieve their economic development goals.