Capital gains (after inflation) and dividends should be treated as ordinary income.

Anything else is games or rent seeking.

If the top marginal rate (including Medicare and Medicaid and surtaxes) on ordinary income is 44% then the top marginal rate for inflation adjusted capital gains and dividends should also be 44%. The reason is, if you're wealthy and can afford to defer your income, you will hide your actual income by creating one shell corporation and then selling it to another shell corporation endlessly, and everything gets counted as capital gains with a discounted rate. It's wrong and it needs to stop.

That said, 44% is high and that rate should be lowered, as long as all income was treated equally.

The idea that a discount on investment taxes, over and above an inflation adjustment, causes economic growth is unproven and unlikely.

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