I have just come back from a trip to Vietnam in which I visited homes in the Mekong delta. We're talking about a place where half the homes are made of palm, there's no running water at all, and the people are dirt poor. I've seen some of these palm shacks with large-screen TVs - older CRT types, admittedly, but it drove home the point that "big screen TV" is no longer a sign of opulence.

Similarly, the people aren't starving, but that doesn't not mean that they aren't poor - if "electronic gadgets and absence of famine" is all you need to define as "not poor", I disagree with you.