TO CREATE MORE JOBS, WE MUST CUT THE COST OF CAPITAL

Congratulations are in order for Jackson attorney John Lichtenegger, who Friday became the second Cape Girardeau Countian ever elected President of the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri. John occupies an important position that has been filled by many other distinguished leaders in our state's history.

The only other local resident to serve in this prestigious post was the late, great James A. Finch Jr., who later served with such distinction on the Missouri Supreme Court. At the time of his death, many around the state who were in a position to know praised him by saying that Jim Finch was the all-time standout curator who ever served.

This is a difficult time for the leaders in our educational community. John has a lot of good ideas for trimming the budget and eliminating duplication in Higher Education, while raising standards at our premier state university. In the wake of Proposition B's overwhelming defeat, it can be argued that our leaders have a mandate for these and other cost-cutting actions. We generally support President Lichtenegger and all the curators as they go about this difficult task.

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Ours is a great and good, a generous and fortunate community. We have a chance to give something back during this Christmas season of joy and good will. For instance, there's the Salvation Army campaign, chaired once again this year by Bob Neff. They're a long way from their goal of $100,000, but past experience suggests they will make it. Our generous people have always responded to our less fortunate neighbors.

The Area Wide United Way campaign is in its final week. Under the impressive leadership of civic leader Harry Rediger, the campaign has closed to within a few thousand dollars of its very ambitious $470,000 goal (an all-time record high).

Many readers have participated in getting us to this point. Others are generous donors from past years who have not been heard from yet this campaign. If you have not done so, won't you just take a minute today to write down your pledge and send it in? You can use the form in the advertisement on page 6A in today's edition, or call the United Way office at 334-9634. Dorothy Klein, the able and effective executive director, would be happy to take you pledge or answer any questions at her office at 100 Broadway.

This Friday is the final-final deadline for the United Way. Let's go over the top!

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For months and months and months and months and months and months, New York Governor Mario Cuomo has been undecided on whether to run for President. This could be the week, we are told, when a decision might come at last from the fascinating and impressively eloquent figure some call "the Hamlet of Albany."

At such time as Mr. Cuomo finally makes up his mind to seek the White House, you can bet it'll be ... "because the American people are entitled to decisive leadership."

In Mr. Cuomo's defense, at least he's one of the two Democratic presidential contenders who supports a cut in the capital gains tax rate. The other is an announced candidate, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas.

The United States currently saddles our productive class with the highest cost of capital in the industrial world. Among our primary trading partners, Germany has no tax at all on the sale of assets held longer than six months; Japan has a one percent capital gains tax. Our rate since the 1986 tax reform act is 28 percent. Also, we don't index the tax for inflation, so the seller of a small business, stock, or land is taxed on the entire gain, both real and inflationary. Is that fair? Is that wise?

An earlier reduction in this tax rate to 15 percent, as President Bush has pleaded with Congress to do for three years, would have headed off this recession. Cutting it today would instantly increase the value of all stock and of every piece of commercial and residential real estate in the country (among other assets), by increasing the after-tax yield of these assets.

In the bargain, a lower capital gains tax rate would: 1) immediately reduce the taxpayers' cost of the Savings & Loan bailout by increasing the value of the real estate held by bankrupt thrifts; 2) improve the balance sheets of all banks and insurance companies who look to real estate as collateral on their loans; 3) send the stock market soaring to new heights, possibly in the 4,000-5,000 range on the Dow; 4) increase the value, strength and solvency of all pension plans, public and private; 5) give a powerful shot in the arm to America's international competitiveness; and 6) yield more revenue at the lower rates than the present tax rate does, as the rate reductions in 1978 and 1981 are demonstrated to have done.

With the higher capital gains tax, we have literally stopped creating those small businesses and the jobs they create, the very activity that made the '80s such a robust decade in job growth. This reduction is surely the tonic we need, and it should not be a partisan issue.

We will not have much of an economy in the 1990s until we reduce the cost of capital, the very seed corn of our economic future.

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For some Democrats, the only thing is to recapture the White House. To this end, they want a weakened President, they want President Bush to fail. A failing economy is not so bad as long as they can blame the President.

Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D.-Ill., House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, speaking to the American Trucking Association in November 1989