Baseball as life, or life as baseball?

During my recent period of unemployment, there has been a lot of political discussion about extending unemployment benefits. Many Republicans have been against the extension based on their belief that people are gaming the system and not looking for work hard enough because the government checks just keep coming. All the right-wing radio personalities have been railing about how the moochers like me are just stealing money from the producers because we're too lazy to go out and produce something on our own. I feel the disgust and resentment and outright hatred in their voices when they talk about people on unemployment.


My feeling, based on my experience, is that financial status has much more to do with circumstance than with merit, particularly for those on the top and the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. We can swim around the vastness of lower and upper middle class expending all our energy trying to make it up to that next financial level, but no amount of effort will ever achieve what many are born with. What bugs me is the people who have been given so much through mere circumstance, and believe they have achieved something through merit. I read a quote the other day, "He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." I feel like I hit a single, and got thrown out trying to stretch it into a double. And now that guy on third is giving me a hard time, even though I've got more hits than he does.