The Democratic Party’s left flank has ideas for fixing the country

TUCKER CARLSON, a Fox News host, and Bernie Sanders, a democratic-socialist senator, seldom agree. Yet on the matter of billionaires supposedly sponging off taxpayer largesse, they are completely simpatico. On September 5th Mr Sanders introduced a bill which would force large firms to pay taxes exactly equal to the amount of safety-net benefits consumed by their employees, including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid. The target of Mr Sanders’s legislation, titled the “Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies” or “Stop BEZOS” Act, was clear. Attacking Jeff Bezos, the founder and boss of Amazon, is a uniquely bipartisan pastime. The left of the Democratic Party views him as a latter-day Ebenezer Scrooge. Trump-cheerleaders like Mr Carlson despise him for owning the meddlesome Washington Post. Mainstream economists took a dismal view of the pitch.