Be sure to read “Private Sector Parasites” by Michael Lind at Salon. He writes that the real “takers” are not the poor receiving benefits, but “the rent-extracting, unproductive rich.”

The term “rent” in this context refers to more than payments to your landlords. As Mike Konczal and many others have argued, profits should be distinguished from rents. “Profits” from the sale of goods or services in a free market are different from “rents” extracted from the public by monopolists in various kinds. Unlike profits, rents tend to be based on recurrent fees rather than sales to ever-changing consumers. While productive capitalists — “industrialists,” to use the old-fashioned term — need to be active and entrepreneurial in order to keep ahead of the competition, “rentiers” (the term for people whose income comes from rents, rather than profits) can enjoy a perpetual stream of income even if they are completely passive.

Do read the whole post.

Update: Kinda related, if you think about it — Charles Pierce, “The Silent Majorities“