I definitely disagree with increasing the capital gains tax. If anything, the tax should be eliminated completely after an investment is held for X number of years. If you hold a stock or piece of real estate for 20 years, any potential "gain" you get would mostly be eaten by inflation anyway. We should be encouraging long term investing, by eliminating capital gains for anything held for 20 or more years. Then, there could be a sliding scale up to 50% (where capital gains taxes are now).  We should only consider taxing at a higher rate for investments that are "flipped" after a short period.