Ske. 5] INCOME 109 
how durable the instrument; it is always double counting 
to include the instrument and its uses. The savings may 
be invested in land or in confectionery. The only true 
income is the use of the land or the use of the confec- 
tionery. To include also the value of the land or the 
value of the confectionery is to count asincome the capi- 
talization of income. 
§ 5 
Economists have been more or less aware of the pitfall 
of double counting, but not of the reason for it. They 
have therefore attempted to avoid it, not by excluding all 
commodities from the income concept and restricting it to 
services, but by specifically excluding from income certain 
groups of commodities. Naturally, they have been at 
a loss to formulate a satisfactory and logical principle for 
this exclusion. Some of them have no better suggestion to 
offer than that all “large” or “unusual” acquisitions should 
be ruled out, and that only those commodities which come 
into a man’s possession in a “regular” stream shall be en- 
titled to the name income. This makeshift has received 
much currency among German writers. To be sure, it 
serves the purpose of excluding from income such obvi- 
ously inappropriate elements as bequests and gifts of large 
fortunes. It is clear that when a well-known millionaire 
recently fell heir to seventy millions, this did not con- 
stitute his income for the year in which he received it, but 
that it merely constituted the principal or capital from 
which he would receive income in subsequent years. But 
the reason that it is improper to call this suddenly acquired 
fortune income is not that it was large, nor that it was 
sudden, but that it consisted of rights to concrete wealth 
— factories, ships, railways, and dwellings. These things 
are not under any circumstances income, but yield income 
through future uses. It is idle to call income “regular”; 
for we all know that it is irregular.