[A shortened version of this also appeared on Jan 24, 2012 as an Op-Ed in Erie Times News' Opinion Pages/Another View]

President Barack Obama invoked the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt before an audience in Kansas in December that “Government should help level the playing field to create equal opportunities”.  This is profoundly important for America's future and for its middle class which needs to remain the engine of our nation's economic prosperity.

Pursuing policies that expand "equal opportunity" is very different than pursuing "equal outcomes" or redistribution. Obama saw it as the key to keeping the American Dream alive for the vast majority of people, and his words were long overdue.

Trends are alarming.  The middle class, built from the mid-1940's to the mid-1970's to be the strongest in the world, is shrinking and upward mobility is declining. Since the late 1970's middle class income and wealth grew modestly or remained stagnant for the working class, while the income and wealth at the top increased 15-fold more. In the last decade incomes of the top 1% doubled while the average income fell by 6%. Poverty is on the rise.

Worse, Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. Among advanced industrialized countries, it is in US, where it now matters most who your parents were and those born on one of society’s lower rungs have the least chance of climbing to the top or even to the middle.

The reasons are many and complex, among them: corporate and individual tax codes which favor wealth accumulation in the hands of few and enable outsourcing of jobs, an over-grown financial sector turned predatory and speculative rather than engineer capital formation for investments and job creation on US soil, globalization and unfair trade, advances in technology and increases in productivity, decline of manufacturing sector, and persistent high unemployment and under-employment. For 30 years we let these problems grow without responding adequately.   

For an economy to grow and create jobs it needs capital, innovation and consumers.  The vast middle class used to provide strong consumer demand. But now private debt is forbidding, house prices suppressed, wages stagnant and disposable income is diminished while health care and education costs rise. It is no wonder domestic demand has slowed.

Demand in emerging countries is growing but it will generate few jobs in US,  as most big US corporations attracted by lower wages, disregard for labor rules or protections for the environment move facilities and jobs overseas. 

Moreover, lower taxes for the wealthy and big corporations do not generate demand or create jobs. Wealthy individuals have maxed out their spending, they invest mostly in Wall St speculation and overseas markets. Low taxes for corporations combined with low taxes for their CEO's enable taking money out of the business through excessive pay rather than leaving it inside and investing it in facilities and jobs. And tax breaks facilitate moving corporate operations and jobs overseas. Instead, we need many good paying jobs, lower taxes and higher disposable income for the true job creators, our middle class, whose spending fuels the economy.

As Obama argued, we can not afford to return to the policies that stacked the deck for the wealthy and left everybody else to fend for themselves. The Republican credo of lower taxes and less regulation is not the answer. Letting the market alone does not take care of problems; "you are on your own economics" does not work. It was tried during the last decade, it didn't work, as it didn't before the Great Depression or in other times of deep crisis in our economy. 

Roosevelt, the Republican "trust buster" said "the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure that competition is fair, open and honest".  Restoring fairness in taxation, closer regulation of financial institutions, and national commitments to education and research must become top priorities.

In order to reinvigorate the middle class and spur job creation we need serious  investments in infrastructure, multiple sources of energy and transportation; and a  revitalized first-class education system affordable to our youth, together with job retraining and reemployment programs. 

We also need comprehensive tax reform that closes corporate loopholes, lowers taxes for small business and the middle class, but raises taxes on the top brackets; a reformed financial system supportive of job-creating investments and not of predation or speculation; and new industrial and trade policies that discourage outsourcing of jobs overseas, expand markets for our products, but respect labor rights and the environment. 

And we must pursue well designed reforms to the social safety net and health care system that preserve benefits but cut costs; as well as reductions in defense spending, while ending the wars and modernizing our military and its doctrine.

Investing in the nation' s future, raising tax revenues and cutting spending judiciously must be implemented jointly; it will spur job growth and decrease the deficit. Public and private sector must co-operate on this national mission; neither sector can do it alone.

The current status qvo, tax privileges and excessive political influence of big corporations, the financial sector and the super-wealthy are not acceptable or sustainable. It's time to focus on a vision that benefits the middle class and expands the American Dream of equal opportunity and social mobility.

EVAN GERANIOTIS, of Erie, is a retired professor from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and the University of Maryland in College Park.