I have been lucky enough to have a few jobs that paid the bills (though barely) that gave me some perspective on this. Before college, I worked at a gambling parlor where I was effectively paid to take other people's money from them and to give it to my boss. The potential for a financial gain was there as the establishment was...quasilegal at best...but it never happened that one stranger would walk in and take the house, never to return. Instead, older men and women would come in night after night and spend the majority of their disposable income hoping to break even though they usually never did. This was a bullshit job, and worse it was a job that directly contributed to the detriment both of the local economy and to that of the greater economy. They could have cut my job entirely by simply direct depositing money into the bank account of my employer and it would have cost them less in the long run (counting for gas and "concessions" consumed while gambling). However, the majority of the customers were older, uneducated, and lonely. Thus, they paid more for the social interaction than for the hope of winning big money. At the time, I worked maybe 70 hours a week and though I always had a little pocket money I was by no means "financially stable." What's more, the job in no way contributed to my long-term financial well being. Luckily, this was my last job before college, and since then I've been fortunate enough not only to find a decent job, but a job that works to optimize customer-commercial interactions - we try to help businesses actually figure out what their customers want to buy and to help the customers buy it more easily - and at the same time I have a roughly 20 hour work week that allows me to support my family and to give us a fair amount of recreational time. Still, I know that I am in the minority with my good fortune, and that makes me sad for others who are less fortunate than I.