The real takers

Are the unproductive, rent-extracting rich. The tax benefits they get drain the economy millions times more than people on social welfare. They are the real takers. Here's what this article means by rent:

"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."

Then the pitch:

"To counter the domination of America’s rentier oligarchs, we need an Anti-Rentier campaign that would unite unlikely groups: owners of productive businesses as well as workers, populist conservatives and liberal reformers. An Anti-Rentier movement would distinguish businesses that make profits by providing worthwhile goods or services in innovative ways from rentier interests that passively extract exorbitant tolls and fees from the economy without adding any value.

"An Anti-Rentier movement would oppose unproductive, ill-begotten wealth, not the rich in general. Wealthy individuals who get richer by investing in start-up companies or funding long-lived, creative blue-chip firms provide a valuable benefit to society, even as they risk losing their own money. Such risk-taking investors are the opposites of financial sector rentiers who seek to bribe policymakers into letting them privatize their gains while socializing their losses."

See the article for much more.