For people that feel that the capital gains crowd gets special treatment…

How would you be with waiting 8 years for each paycheck, or being paid now in 2004 dollars ( paid 82 cents for each dollar you earn)?

Part of the long term capital gains reduction is a crude compensation for inflation. In this case it fails miserably because of the ludicrous ratio between profit and investment, but in the more normal case where you might make 40% while inflation came up 25% it achieves a sort of balance between tax and inflation's erosion of capital.