Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Natasha Sarin, an assistant professor of law and finance at the University of Pennsylvania, have waded into the debate over how best to tax the rich.

In an essay printed in the opinion pages of the Boston Globe on Thursday, Summers and Sarin argue for several revenue-raising proposals as alternatives to plans pitched by US Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to tax vast stores of wealth or hike the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent.

Friday’s Globe will feature more from the duo about the “challenges” in Warren’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s ideas, but on Thursday the two finance experts made the case for a multi-pronged approach that they claim could raise even more money than either of the other two proposals. They said their approach would also make the nation’s financial system fairer and promote a healthier economy.

Given the current makeup of Congress, the arguments over which tax hike to support are still merely academic for the moment. Whether any of the ideas have a shot at becoming law will largely depend on who controls both branches of Congress and the White House after the 2020 election.

Warren, a presidential candidate, and Ocasio-Cortez, the highest-profile new member of Congress, are both Democrats. Summers served as treasury secretary for President Clinton and as a top advisor to President Obama. Debates premised on the idea that people should pay more in federal taxes are largely confined within the Democratic circles.

Some of Summers and Sarin’s ideas involve undoing tax cuts that the Republican Congress made last session. They advocate for ratcheting the corporate tax rate back up to 25 percent, and ending the pass-through deduction, which they describe as the “most notorious of the Trump tax changes.”

On the whole, the pair favor addition by subtraction. They want to do away with tax shelters and other means by which the wealthy keep their money out of national coffers. They also want to beef up Internal Revenue Service enforcement and give it a new focus on the rich. Today, recipients of the earned income tax credit are twice as likely to be audited than those making more than $500,000 annually, according to Summers and Sarin.

There is a lot of money at issue. Over a decade, the Summers and Sarin menu of proposals would raise a total of $2.83 trillion; Warren’s wealth tax on those worth more than $50 million would raise $2.75 trillion; and Ocasio-Cortez’s idea of increasing the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent would raise $720 billion. To put that in perspective, the Congressional Budget Office in January predicted that federal revenues would total $3.5 trillion in 2019.

Warren and Summers represent different factions within the Democratic party. Summers is more aligned with Wall Street, which is a frequent target of Warren’s. Summers was president of Harvard University when Warren taught at its law school, and the two have tangled before when Summers was angling to become chairman of the Federal Reserve.

–ANDY METZGER

BEACON HILL

A Globe editorial urges swift action on legislation to rein in use of smartphones while driving. This recent CommonWealth In Depth feature looked at the tensions between the push for road safety and concerns over racial profiling that stymied past efforts.

Conversion therapy legislation is picking up steam on Beacon Hill, but questions are being raised about whether the legislation will have much of an impact. (CommonWealth)

House Speaker Robert DeLeo says his chamber won’t join in a commission announced by the Senate to study the state’s tax system but will instead rely on the existing Revenue Committee to ponder such matters. (Boston Globe)

The House approves $8 million for family planning clinics at risk of losing federal funding. (MassLive)

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

Scituate selectmen say they will stop enforcing a zoning bylaw that limits the use of political signs in town after receiving a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts calling the rules unconstitutional.

Boston’s Inspectional Services Department Commissioner William Christopher felt “betrayed” when Joseph Pizziferri Jr. revealed that he intended to convert a house in Dorchester into a sober home for 15 women. Rep. Liz Miranda thinks the state needs to take on the issue of sober homes. (WBUR)

Former Stoughton Town Manager Michael Hartman will receive a $125,000 settlement after selectmen voted unanimously in favor of concluding his multi-year wrongful termination suit against the board. (Brockton Enterprise)

The city of Boston is circulating a possible redesign of Moakley Park in South Boston. (Dorchester Reporter)

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

Some are wondering why Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation was supposed to take the politics out of the Russia election interference probe, punted on the question of whether President Trump obstructed justice and put the issue into the hands of political appointees. (Boston Globe)

ELECTIONS

The state Democratic Party is calling for federal and state regulators to look into the fundraising practices of the Mass. Fiscal Alliance. (Boston Globe)

EDUCATION

Demonstrators marched to the Boston School Committee meeting to protest cuts at schools caused by enrollment decreases. (Boston Globe)

North Andover School Committee Chairwoman Holly Vietzke-Lynch says the committee is not planning to discuss the high school’s controversial school safety plans signed by alleged victims of sexual assault at Thursday night’s meeting, but the committee expects to hear from the public on that issue. (Eagle-Tribune)

Patrick Sullivan, assistant superintendent of Cohasset schools, has been unanimously chosen as the next superintendent starting July 1 by the town’s school committee.  (Patriot Ledger)

Buoyed by a $93 million endowment, revenue-generating graduate programs, and a hospitality property, Endicott College is in good financial shape, according to Steven DiSalvo, who will take over as president after stepping down from Saint Anselm college this summer. (Gloucester Daily Times)

Because of charitable tax deductions, American taxpayers may have subsidized the bribes that parents allegedly paid in the college admissions scandal. (WGBH)

HEALTH/HEALTH CARE

A New Jersey doctor was mildly disciplined by the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine for writing prescriptions for Bay State patients without ever examining them, in some cases without even talking to them. (CommonWealth)

Patients of the Whittier Street Health Center in Roxbury are asking the organization to re-hire medical professionals who were fired or laid off during a union campaign last fall. (WBUR)

ARTS/CULTURE

An art show in Framingham focuses on how women apologize more than men. (MetroWest Daily News)

TRANSPORTATION

Hilda Figueroa pushed her granddaughter to safety but she couldn’t elude the Amtrak train that was bearing down on them. She was struck and killed on a section of track in Springfield that is off-limits to pedestrians but not fenced off and regularly used as a cut-through. (MassLive)

Representatives from MassDOT say the $13 million reconstruction of one of the Cape’s most dangerous and busiest intersections, at Yarmouth Road and Route 28 in Hyannis, is scheduled to begin this year and is expected to be completed by spring of 2023, if not before. (Cape Cod Times)

CASINOS/MARIJUANA

Kim Sinatra, a high-ranking Wynn Resorts officials caught up in the Steve Wynn sexual misconduct scandal, left the company in August with $9 million in cash and stock. (CommonWealth)

State officials say they are looking into whether applicants have skirted rules limiting how many marijuana licenses a firm can hold in the wake of a Globe Spotlight report raising questions about two big companies. (Boston Globe)

A messy conflict has emerged in East Boston over a city ordinance limiting the concentration of pot shops by requiring they be at least half a mile apart. Universal Hub had the details yesterday and the Globe details the kerfuffle today. Meanwhile, Uxbridge strike a deal with a company headed by the vice chair of the planning board to open a drive-in pot store; the store still needs a licenses from the Cannabis Control Commission. (Telegram & Gazette)

Edible marijuana products appear to pose a stronger danger than smoking pot, including acute psychiatric symptoms, according to a new study of emergency room visits in Denver. The study author also says the three violent deaths definitively linked to cannabis in Colorado all involved edibles rather than pot smoking. (New York Times) This recent CommonWealth In Depth interview looked at whether the risks of psychiatric disorders from marijuana use have been underplayed.

Walgreens and CVS are preparing to sell a line of CBD products. CBD is the nonpsychoactive ingredient in cannabis that appears to be going mainstream. (USA Today)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS

Fourteen Springfield police officers were indicted in connection with an off-duty beating of civilians in 2015. (MassLive)

Three dancers at the Golden Banana in Peabody have sued the strip club alleging that the $50 to $100 fees they pay to perform violate the state’s tip sharing laws. They are hoping the action filed in Salem Superior Court will become a class action suit. (Salem News)

A hijab ripped off of a 72-year-old woman in Braintree last year is one of the 232 civil rights cases brought to the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Massachusetts in 2018. (WGBH)

A Lawrence man is indicted for rape and murder in connection with the death of his 11-year-old great niece, Precious Wallaces. (MassLive)

McDanner Pereyra and Jennifer Ouch have been charged with drug trafficking and gun crimes after Ouch brought their 1-year-old daughter to Lawrence General Hospital and she tested positive for fentanyl. (Eagle-Tribune)

A Clarksburg man accused of beating and slapping his children is claiming he was disciplining them. (Berkshire Eagle)

MEDIA

Globe business reporter Janelle Nanos is doing a series of video interviews with Boston area business leaders. The line-up, which includes chef Joanne Chang, Blue Cross CEO Andrew Dreyfus, and construction bigwig John Fish, is interesting enough — but so too is the fact that the series is being sponsored by Koch Industries, controlled by brothers Charles and David Koch, whose bankrolling of conservative causes, including combating climate change legislation, has made them bogeymen in progressive political circles.