Sec. 14] EARNINGS AND INCOME 255 ings” as income, is essentially to regard an increase of capital as income. But from what has been said it is clear that he who increases his income must decrease his capital to an equal extent. Capital and income are thus mutually exclusive. One cannot receive the whole standard income, and at the same time secure also an increase of his capital. The truth of this has been instinctively expressed in the adage, “ You cannot eat your cake and have it too.” We have learned, then, to distinguish between standard and realized income. The one is ideal, the other actual. The one is that income which, if it were received, would leave the level of capital-value unchanged; the other is that income which is actually received and detached from capi- tal, no matter whether that capital, as a result, is increased or decreased. In short, the one is earned, the other realized. The two may, of course, coincide, in which case capital- value remains constant. When they do not coincide, the discrepancy measures the increase or decrease of capital- value. This discrepancy may be partially or wholly done away with by means of a depreciation fund or other de- vices whereby realized income, otherwise irregular, is made regular. But, merely to reckon depreciation is not to pro- vide for it. It merely stigmatizes part of realized income as “coming out of capital,” but it does not make good the loss of capital nor prevent its becoming a part of realized income. No more does the mere calling of “sav- ings’ by the name of income make it realized as income. These two procedures are both attempts to standardize income in thought when it is not standardized in fact. We have seen that they represent a confusion both be- tween capital and income and between income which is merely earned and income which is actually realized, and that they lead to inequitable taxation — double taxation to the saver and remission of taxes to the spendthrift.