Okay, well first off, I pity the developing world for the ways in which wealthier nations exploit their resources, through both natural resource extraction and human labor, while providing bare minimum as payment.

But on a more everyday humn level, you don't have the security blanket that much of the first world provides you. My SO's family came from very poor rural Guatemala, and his young aunt (28 yo) was recently diagnosed with cancer. There's no way she can ever pay to have it treated, and she has two young children. Here in Canada we give what we can to her, but we just don't have enough. We have to accept that this is going to take her life, and there' nothing we can do about it. That doesn't have to happen when your country is wealthy enough to provide adequate health care.

Its easy to say their lives are "simple" when you don't have to live the hardships that they do. When you can't just go home to your country if times get rough. any financial hardship can absolutely destroy the overall well being of you and your family, irreparably.

Furthermore I feel that the value of an adequate school system is being undervalued in this question. Once again using the example of the Guate family- the SO's mother had to drop out of school at grade 6 to help her family, even though it gave her confidence, an passion. From that point on, but now especially that she lives in the first world, her low level of education significantly holds her back, and really hurts her confidence.

Also, just because the people you met in the Philippines aren't hungry doesn't make that the case for much of the developing world. Furthermore, even though they can't afford the more useless consumer goods in life doesn't mean that they don't crave them as much as people in the first world do. Many of their lives are still rife with the desire that holds us back.

I am all for minimalism, I am all for anti consumption, but I find this viewpoint to come off a bit privileged. We have the choice of leaving our situations and going to live in the third world if we tire of the rat race of the first. Whereas residents of the developing world can't escape their circumstances 98% of the time, no matter how much they would aspire to do so.