In this case you are truly wrong. My friend will get about $12k a year from Social Security. The only reason he gets by is because I give him a place to live for free. His car is only slightly newer than mine (mine is a '97 pickup, because I'm a cheap bastard when it comes to cars). His computers (desktop and laptop) are hand me downs from friends. No TV at all, his computers won't even play videos from the Internet. I doubt he goes to restaurants even once a month if he is paying for himself. His only monthly expense other than his cell phone is the cost of his prescriptions/medical insurance which had been very little up until now. He was on Medicaid but is loosing that because his income from SS is too high.
He is lucky that he has friends. Otherwise he would be homeless and SOL. Blaming any of this on him living lavishly is pure BS. He was in a marriage working in a family business that ended up bust. He was screwed in a divorce and ended up with a 10 year old minivan, $15k and no job.
I'm terrible at remembering who people are in this newsgroup, but if you are the guy who sells shrimp, picture yourself if your business had gone down the tubes during the big oil spill in the gulf and you ended up divorced with no home. I think that many of us are not far from being like my friend. I know that my current happy state is as much the product of good fortune as it is skill or intelligence.
Some of us manage to dodge the bullets life shoots at us, others don't.