Avarice: Pampering Pets while People Suffer in Poverty

Here is a picture of one of a million dwellings in Guatemala, where people actually live (and entire family, in fact):

On the day that I visited this family last summer, they were receiving a new stove (a non-electric, wood-burning, made from cinder blocks, cement and dirt kind of stove). The mother had almost nothing to offer us as a welcome, but showed us hospitality by sharing the family’s bananas growing on a small tree in the yard. Here’s a peek at their bathroom, in the corner of their tiny lot:

People live in such places. Millions and millions of people. I’ve never spent one day of my life in such squalor. I’ve never even camped in a place with reasonably comparable facilities. Almost ANY American campground has better infrastructure than this.

Meanwhile, a manufacturer of gadgets and electronics develops a $31,000 kennel for affluent pets:

This is avaricious idolatry. It’s another sign of the sickness of our culture.