any country that doesn't incentivize investment will quickly languish. what the usa should do is allow pre-tax income to be invested, so poor people can also take advantage.
We have observed close to two decades of rapid asset price inflation that can very reasonably be argued outstripped actual productive activity. Rent seeking isn’t something that should be incentivized either and is ultimately a very corrosive behavior in our economy, politics and society.
Which of course, they do.
Poor people are people like us (or sometimes are us), some are quite prudent and would love to make an investment that pays, even if it's small.
And yet the US is pretty unique amongst countries in treating capital gains as wholly different from earned income, and taxed significantly less if at all.
Even as someone who benefits from it, I've yet to see a good argument as to why a working stiff should pay more taxes than someone who makes their income from investments. That's inherently regressive.
consider all of these VCs throwing away money on things like uber. would it be better if they just kept it in a savings account (because of no financial benefit of investing)? most investments don't pay off, so you need a push, the push is that long term capital investments are taxed less.
Also pretty sure savings interest is taxed as capital gains.