"The Politics of Taxes Are Changing"

"Paul Krugman and others have made sound economic arguments for raising the marginal tax rate above 70 percent for high earners. 'A policy that makes the rich a bit poorer will affect only a handful of people, and will barely affect their life satisfaction, since they will still be able to buy whatever they want,' Krugman wrote, adding that 'when taxing the rich, all we should care about is how much revenue we raise. The optimal tax rate on people with very high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue.' Economic growth figures suggest that the economy performed better overall when the marginal tax rate was much higher. Economic inequality, moreover, has exploded in the four decades since Ronald Reagan first cut the top marginal rate from 70 to 28 percent."

Alex Shephard at The New Republic asserts that "Democrats can argue that they're the party of fiscal seriousness not in spite of any plan to soak the rich, but because of it."

And Michael Sheng at History News Network contends that Bernie Sanders is actually in favor of social welfare rather than socialism.