To counter the weak employment market, Summers called for major growth in government expenditures to fill needs that the private sector is not addressing:

In our society, whether it is taking care of the young or taking care of the old, or repairing a lot that needs to be repaired, there is a huge amount of very valuable work that needs to be done. It’s much less clear, to use a modern phrase, that there’s a viable business model for getting it done. And I guess the reason why I think there is going to need to be a lot of reflection on the role of government going forward is that, if I’m right, that there’s vitally important work to be done for which there is no standard capital business model that will get it done. That suggests important roles for public policy.

Earlier this year, Summers co-wrote the Report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity, a forceful set of economic proposals released on Jan. 15 by the Center for American Progress.

In order to stem the disproportionate share of income flowing to corporate managers and owners of capital, and to address the declining share going to workers, the report calls for tax and regulatory policies to encourage employee ownership, the strengthening of collective bargaining rights, regulations requiring corporations to provide fringe benefits to employees working for subcontractors, a substantial increase in the minimum wage, sharper overtime pay enforcement, and a huge increase in infrastructure appropriations – for roads, bridges, ports, schools – to spur job creation and tighten the labor market.

Summers also calls for significant increases in the progressivity of the United States tax system. He would eliminate or modify many of the tax breaks that now provide most of their benefits to the affluent, including the conversion of the mortgage interest deduction into a credit. “While deductions deliver a larger benefit to tax payers in higher tax brackets, credits deliver the same benefits to all tax payers, making the tax code more progressive,” the report notes. In addition, the report presses for much tougher rules governing the taxation of corporate overseas income.

I spoke with Summers on the phone last week to get more details about his thinking. One of his central goals, he said, is to make sure that “workers get a larger share of the pie.” He advocates aggressive steps to eliminate “rents” — profits that result from monopoly or other forms of government protection from competition. Summers favors attacking rents in the form of “exclusionary zoning practices” that bid up the price of housing, “excessively long copyright” protections, and financial regulations “providing implicit subsidies to a fortunate minority.”

Signaling that he now finds himself on common ground with stalwarts of the Democratic left like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Stiglitz, Summers adds, “Government needs to try to make sure everyone can get access to financial markets on an equal basis.”

Along with a growing number of Democratic policy advocates, Summers supports looking past income inequality to the distribution of wealth. During our conversation, he pointed out that “a large fraction of capital gains escapes taxation entirely” through “the stepped up basis at death.” Stepped up basis refers to an I.R.S. provision reducing the capital gains tax liability on inherited assets so that the beneficiary’s capital gains tax is minimized. Revenue losses from the stepped up basis amounted, in the 2014 fiscal year, to $36.4 billion according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Summers’s policy proposals have been praised by former critics.

Asked for his assessment of Summers’s views, Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal, pro-labor Economic Policy Institute, emailed “I very much appreciate that Larry Summers has recently highlighted the need for a ‘high pressure economy’ and the need to ‘expand worker bargaining power.’ ”