[pwnt by pat]

Absolutely - as much power as you can reasonably run. The principle is called headroom. iyamwuthiam is absolutely incorrect about there being no scientific or rational basis.

The reason to run a lot of power isn't for output. Music is highly dynamic: symbol crashes, snare drum hits, and other instruments have a lot of energy released over a miniscule amount of time compared to the overall duration of the note - and way more than the RMS of the rest of the music. If you're not running with enough headroom, these transients will cause the amp to clip when it doesn't have enough power to reproduce them.

Additionally, some speakers simply require more power than RMS to reach their limits. This is common with speakers in small pods that don't have enough airspace. And that's power that's in addition to whatever headroom you run.

Some people go crazy with headroom. High end home audio guys recommend 10x recommended RMS power. I think 1.5x is reasonable. 3x is fairly easily achievable.