The principle of equality of sacrifices which underlies the progressive theory does not justify the levelling and communistic inferences that have sometimes been brought against it. Equality of sacrifice does not mean equality of satisfied, or unsatisfied, wants after the tax has been collected. If Brown pays a tax of one per cent. on his income of two thousand dollars, it does not follow that Jones with an income of ten thousand dollars should pay a sufficiently high rate to leave him with only the net amount remaining to Brown; namely, 1980 dollars. Equality of sacrifice means proportional equality of burden, not equality of net resources after the tax has been deducted. The object of the progressive rate is to make relatively equal the sacrifices _caused by the tax itself_, not to equalise the sum total of burdens or unsatisfied wants that exist among men. Another objection to progressive taxation is that it readily lends itself to confiscation of the largest incomes. All that is necessary to produce this result is to increase the rate with sufficient rapidity. This could be accomplished either by large steps in the rate itself or by small steps in the income increases which formed the basis of the advances in the rate. For example, if the Federal income tax, which at present levies two per cent. on incomes of more than three thousand dollars, and three per cent. on incomes of over twenty thousand dollars, should thereafter progress geometrically with every geometrically progressive increment of income, the rate on incomes above $640,000 would be 96 per cent.! Or if the rate should progress arithmetically with every ten thousand dollars of increase above twenty thousand dollars, it would be 100 per cent. on incomes of over $990,000!