So if you spend 10 years building a company and then sell it for 10 million, you think that you should only get to keep 1 million(ish)?
The only way to make a long term gains tax fair is to allow you to spread it out over the time it took you to make the gain. And even then it isn't really fair.
If you make a company and sell it in three years for 50 million, why is it fair that you only keep 5 million?
The only way to answer questions like this are by first asking our goals. Is our goal to let successful business leaders become ludicrously wealthy while externalizing much of the risk? Is our goal to have a system where the natural luck of the system creates lottery-style winners and losers and let that be? Or is our goal to have a maximally productive and healthy society?
Wait what? Two friends of mine sold a company for $10M last year, that was like them and 4 other employees, and the (technical) founders easily did more than half the work..
The only way to make a long term gains tax fair is to allow you to spread it out over the time it took you to make the gain. And even then it isn't really fair.
If you make a company and sell it in three years for 50 million, why is it fair that you only keep 5 million?