NEW YORK — In the most comprehensive policy speech of her presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday (July 14) presented her vision of a "growth and fairness economy," an economic agenda intended to lift middle-class wages, expand social services, and increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans to combat a widening gap between rich and poor.

Mrs Clinton said "the defining economic challenge of our time" is raising incomes for the vast majority of Americans whose wages have remained virtually stagnant for 15 years as the costs of housing, college, child care and health care have soared.

"We must raise incomes for hard-working Americans so they can afford a middle-class life," Mrs Clinton said in a speech at the liberal New School in Greenwich Village in New York. "That will be my mission from the first day I'm president to the last."

The widespread feeling that the economic recovery has not benefited large parts of the population has helped frame the 2016 presidential race. But crafting an agenda that addressed income inequality without vilifying the wealthy has been a central challenge of Mrs Clinton's early candidacy, and for weeks she pored over policy briefings and academic papers and fielded advice from 200 policy experts who often offered divergent opinions.

Mrs Clinton did not sign off on a final version of her speech until just before she took the stage, according to advisers involved in the process who would discuss private conversations only unless they were not named. At the last minute, Mrs Clinton decided to criticise by name three of her potential Republican rivals, adding Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin to the speech in addition to Mr Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor. And considerable hand-wringing went into deciding how forcefully to speak about criminalising financial industry executives before an audience made up largely of her Wall Street donors.

In the end, Mrs Clinton did forcefully denounce fraud and manipulation of currency in the financial sector and said there could be "no justification or tolerance for this kind of criminal behaviour", language that some of her top Wall Street backers had been told of in advance. But Mrs Clinton also appealed to the private sector and Wall Street to work with government to help lift middle-class wages through long-term investment in employees rather than short-term focus on quarterly results.

"The truth is, Hillary, and I've always said this, she is a bold but practical progressive," said Ms Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and one of the many advisers who helped Mrs Clinton write the speech. "I really think that's the stamp of her vision on this."

That vision may not appease the restless left of the Democratic Party and it may not assuage concerns among moderates and independents that Mrs Clinton is a tax-and-spend liberal. But aides said the speech - even with all of the disparate voices that had weighed in to draft it - presented the clearest encapsulation yet of what Mrs Clinton's economic doctrine would look like, and the way in which it would be both similar to and distinct from the policies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and President Barack Obama.

"Both of them were coming into recessions; she is walking into stagnation," said Mr Matt Bennett, a senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist think tank.

Mrs Clinton's assessment yesterday of the country's economic problems, and the message she will carry throughout the campaign, rested entirely on what economists refer to as "the great wage slowdown", a problem that has persisted through recent administrations, both Democratic and Republican. It has only worsened as globalisation and new technology put added pressures on middle- and low-income earners, and has been exacerbated by the rising costs of housing, education and retirement.

The problem has led to widespread frustration; two-thirds of Americans said they thought the distribution of money and wealth in this country should be more even, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in late May.

In her speech, Mrs Clinton blamed Republicans, pointing to Mr Walker, Mr Bush and Mr Rubio, specifically, for "trickle down" policies that "give more wealth to those at the top, by cutting their taxes and letting big corporations write their own rules."

Republicans lost little time in firing back. "It's pretty clear: She will have to raise taxes on American families," Ms Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said of Mrs Clinton's proposals. "There's no way around it."

But Professor Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics who has written extensively about inequality and is an adviser to Mrs Clinton, said "the speech showed a clear understanding that our economy is not working for most Americans" and that "we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules".

To that end, Mrs Clinton called for closing corporate loopholes, eliminating the "carried interest" loophole that allows some financiers to avoid paying millions in income taxes, and expanding the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. And while she did not present details of her tax policy, she said she would delve more deeply into policies that would "rein in excessive risks on Wall Street" in the coming weeks.

Still, she did not embrace the fiery populism of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of her Democratic opponents, whose message has helped him draw big crowds in Iowa and New Hampshire. And she stopped short of endorsing policies championed by Mr Sanders and others in the liberal wing of the party, including breaking up the big banks and a financial transaction tax, or a government fee on the sale or purchase of certain financial assets.

"She gave something rhetorically to both sides and she didn't go too far that either side got uncomfortable," Mr Bennett said.

A heckler who interrupted Mrs Clinton with a question about whether she would reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act seemed to disagree. The act, which Mr Bill Clinton repealed parts of in 1999 leading to the commingling of commercial and investment banking, is widely criticised by liberals as contributing to the 2008 financial crisis. But Dr Alan S Blinder, a former White House economic adviser under Mr Bill Clinton who helped Mrs Hillary Clinton shape her proposals, told Reuters she would not reinstate the 1933 act, which many economists believe is antiquated.

Mrs Clinton did express her concerns about the emergence of a potentially bigger problem, shadow banking, the system of hedge funds and algorithmic traders that has thrived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis with little to no government regulation. "Too many of our major financial institutions are still too complex and too risky," Mrs Clinton said. Some of what Mrs Clinton presented, particularly a plan that would offer companies incentives to increase profit-sharing with employees and that she will pitch in more detail to voters in New Hampshire on Thursday, left some liberal economists sceptical.

"It's unlikely companies are ever going to give something for nothing," said Mr Dean Baker, an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Other proposals, like raising the federal the minimum wage, expanding overtime benefits, and promoting equal pay for women, had the feel of a laundry list of standard Democratic proposals advanced by Mr Obama in his State of the Union address in January. Predictable or not, the economic vision Mrs Clinton presented yesterday placed a strong emphasis on the issues she has long advocated, including helping women in the workforce by advancing "fair scheduling, paid leave and earned sick days", providing better access to early childhood education and addressing rising health care costs.

"I'm well aware that for far too long, these challenges have been dismissed by some as women's issues,” she said. "Well, those days are over." THE NEW YORK TIMES