I think the point is the standard of living in the U.S. is much higher than the rest of the world. Your 35 bucks you spent on your used color TV is the equivalent of one month's wages in many parts of the world.
The fact that you listed all of those “toys” as a sign of wealth is very telling. Perhaps instead you should look for a measure of poverty. Such as whether you had at least one meal yesterday. The “Poor” in the U.S. are often obese.
There is no correlation between wealth and hunger in this country. We have achieved a level of utopia in terms of food. Not only can the poor afford to eat themselves to death, they can also afford to drink themselves to death AND SMOKE A PACK OF CIGARETTES A DAY while doing so. That is an amazing achievement if you stop and think about it.
And often they’re obese because they’re eating high-calorie, low-nutrition foods.
I am amazed when I look in the shopping carts of others. Yeah I’m nosy sometimes. But I’ll see a family of 4 shopping, with a half gallon of milk and 4 2-liter bottles of soda. Koolaid instead of real fruit juice. Frozen apple toaster pastries instead of real apples, frozen egg rolls instead of a head of real cabbage, corn chips instead of fresh ears of corn. Then I look at roly-poly kids hanging on the cart and don’t have to wonder how they got that way.