There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.
Most small businesses in this country today are taxed at the individual level as Corporation LLC. So whatever is cut out of those earnings is money taken out of capital for reinvestment for creating more jobs and opening up more locations.
It may be no surprise that Pittsburgh has direct flights to London, Paris and Frankfurt, but consider this: many of the tourists here have come from Europe to the capital of culture in the Alleghenies.
You don't need to raise taxes on rich people, because they create capitalization and investment. But you need to tax speculation - meaning capital gains.
Wall Street's outsized influence in our nation's capital is something I've talked about for a long time - long before I even thought about running for office. But where I see a problem - an infestation, really - a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine.
Government should stand aside and let the business community prosper instead of imposing new regulations that will only stifle growth and limit access to capital.
I was a chief justice. And before that, I was a district court judge, handled major felonies, including capital murder cases; and I handled major civil litigation.
Living in a capital in Europe but still surrounded by mountains and ocean, my relationship to music was strongest walking to school and back. I would sing to myself and very quickly started mapping out my melodies to landscapes - at the time I just thought it was very matter of fact, a common thing to do.
I really believe that if capital doesn't come to the entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs have no choice but to go to the capital.
