I don&#x27;t agree that there is a difference, at least from a taxation standpoint.  I see no reason why someone who made a million dollars trading stocks (or selling homes) should be taxed differently than someone who made it performing open heart surgery.<p>There isn&#x27;t some magical ethical category open to capital.  I risk my life commuting to work to perform labor.  What of it?<p>In any event, even if I can&#x27;t convince you that there shouldn&#x27;t be a distinction between income and capital gains, I hope I can convince you that there shouldn&#x27;t be a taxation difference between dividends and capital gains.  We need to make the way company ownership works much more like an LLC, where profits flow through to owners by percentage of ownership.  Capital gains are easily manipulated with creative accounting, the madness of crowds, central bank money printing and, most significantly, leverage fluctuations.  If anything, I would want tax capital gains <i>more</i> heavily than dividends, which do not lie.<p>A steady return of profits to owners would enforce the discipline our corporations so desperately need.  Wall Street, of course, doesn&#x27;t want that, and neither do most boards, because it would force them to give up cash that they would rather use for bonuses and stock grants.  And that would be great.