I'm willing to bet this was done to reduce what will be a huge incomming flux of gold farmers. Think about it... get a char to what lvl 15, have 2 Slicers running full time, make a ton of alts built the same... ???
I was funding my "other" crafting skills so this hurts me too but I'm pretty sure it was necessary.
Just my opinion (but then again, anything anyone posts should be simply taken as their opinion)