Being a Machine Operator for 30k a year is a job. Being a professsional baseball player....and being paid millions of dollars to do so....is a GIFT! Don't delude yourself. It's all relative. To a large percentage of the world's population, making 30k US is an outrageously luxurious salary. Try going to India or China some time and complaining that you're trying to make ends meet at $30k US a year. You know, there was time not so long ago when even upper middle class American families only owned ONE television set, ONE family car and siblings actually had to share bedrooms? Before things were massed produced and made cheap , worrying about putting "food on the table" wasn't just a figure of speech. People actually worried about putting food on the table. They couldn't just drive up to the McDonald's Value Menu and order 4,000 calories with the change they find between their seat cushions. So given how good the average American family has it to the rest of the world, and even previous generations of Americans, I guess they can no longer stress or worry about money? If you don't think money isn't a major influence on almost everyone's lives, you have an amazing lack of knowledge about the human condition. Great post.