No Jim, it isn't comparable, and that's the point I was making.
One can be jealous of those above one, but all the time, those below are very jealous of us.
I have great sympathy for the homeless in UK, but it's very rare (thank God!) for anyone to actually starve to death on the street. I've seen skeletally thin people, including tiny twin boys, in Dakar, Senegal patently at their last gasp. My husband says a starved person's corpse can lie decomposing for days on the street in Ivory Coast, until the Firemen (!) scrape it up and trundle it away.
All this is horrific and deplorable. But (referring to the thread title) none of it can possibly be a Personal Choice, neither here nor in the Third World.