the cheating culture

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry often has insisted that he is not "a redistribution Democrat." And even as he promises new programs for a squeezed middle class - largely financed by higher taxes on the rich - Kerry carefully avoids Robin Hood talk about closing income gaps among Americans that rival those last seen in the 1920s.

Kerry seems to believe that class warfare is a sure-fire way to alienate the many ordinary American who aspire to be rich. Perhaps so. Yet, eventually, Democrats and Republicans alike must honestly acknowledge that in today's changing economy it isn't enough just to grow the economic pie. We also need to reslice it.

Since the 1970s, the U.S. economy has been working only for those on the upper rungs of the income ladder - even in brief periods when a rising tide supposedly lifted all boats. During the boom of the late '90s, workers in the middle and at the bottom saw healthy wage gains, but these were not big enough to offset rising costs for housing, health care and college tuition. In 1999, at the height of the boom, research showed that about a third of households across the United States were not earning enough money to cover their basic living costs.

Few politicians from either party will answer the obvious question: If so many Americans barely scraped by during the biggest economic boom in memory, why expect things to be any better during new eras of growth? Trends point in the opposite direction. Business owners are finding better ways to exploit globalization and technological advances to pay workers less, grant fewer benefits and keep more profits for themselves.

The United States has been here before. A century ago, rapid industrialization translated into huge gains for the owners of capital and crumbs for nearly everyone else. The solution to these novel conditions were policies that redistributed national wealth - through a progressive income tax, a minimum wage and other worker rights and a social insurance system that provided a safety net for all Americans. Both political parties embraced redistribution, although rarely in explicit terms.

Today, even as each party stresses their commitment to more economic opportunity, leaders in both offer different versions of the same false hope. Kerry's fiscal conservatism is promised as a way to restore the good times enjoyed under President Clinton - good times that fell short for tens of millions of Americans. President Bush insists that his economic growth strategy, which centers heavily on tax cuts to the rich, will benefit all Americans - one of these days.

It is time for a more honest debate. Prosperity by itself is not - and never has been - a reliable formula for expanding the middle class and ensuring opportunity for all. A fresh generation of public policies is needed to cope with new economic conditions that systematically siphon wealth toward the top and leave a growing number of ordinary Americans insecure.

These policies should include far more generous assistance for higher education, a ticket to middle class life that has grown less and less affordable; large investments in health care, child care and home ownership, which are prerequisites for middle-class security now out of reach to millions; and a combination of a higher minimum wage and income supplements for working households to ensure that anyone who works hard can make ends meet. Money for these large-scale investments will have to be found even as we reduce the federal deficit and shore up entitlement programs for the elderly.

Such dramatic actions are unaffordable without some redistribution of national wealth. Reversing the Bush tax cuts for the most affluent households will pay only part of the bill. We need to roll back all the tax cuts that went to the top 20 percent of earners who already are winning big in this economy. And we need to consider other major steps, such as replacing the regressive payroll tax with a progressive consumption tax, funding public schools more equitably through national taxes rather than local taxes and placing limits on how much affluent Americans can deduct from their taxes for interest on mortgages or savings for retirement.

Redistribution of wealth could be called un-American - and so it may seem until compared with the alternative of abandoning the American Dream.