I talked with Bluffton University professor Don Hooley.   Back from a sabbatical to India, he said it wasn’t uncommon to see a family of four there living in one 15 ft. by 15 ft. room, complete with a small kitchen, small bathroom, and electricity.  What’s more, he said people in these situations consider themselves: “doing well.”  On the other end of the spectrum, and on the other side of the world, we live like kings by comparison, including people in, say, the lower-middle-class here.  But this shouldn’t be about “counting our blessings.”  This should be about going to things like house sharing, and the like, and taking the savings to help our brothers and sisters living in Third World slum dwellings without the kitchen, the bathroom, or electricity.  We have become so gluttonous about our “space” in this country.  Note:  On a campaign stop in Stamford, Connecticut, a couple years back, we met with an attorney who taught at a university in India for a time and was tremendously impacted by the poverty he saw in some of the slums there.  So impacted, in fact, he came back and googled the “international average salary,” which was a little more than $9,000 at the time.  He decided to live on this, and started by moving his family into a small trailer.  He takes the rest of his income and gives it to humanitarian aid agencies working in India.