One Last Peeve...honest! This time it's expensive food...?

I am a graduate from a culinary school and have grown to despise the way people shell out HUNDREDS of dollars for a night out at some famous hoity toity restaurant. The French Laundry is *THE* prime example of this. $240 for a 'tasting' menu?! Get out! I don't care if a monkey sh@t out those coffee beans, I was raised in a frugal household and volunteering for a charity that feeds the hungry makes me happy for simple peasant food. Give me a bowl of curry, some rice and a Leinie and I am set! Above all, I feel this Iron-Cheffery and Emeril junk is just feeding the affluenza that this Westernized world is suffering from. Please, tell me, what shallow materialistic things that America holds in high regard are nothing more than what feeds the beast of finance? Expensive food is mine. Feed the hungry, for dog's sake. People in Haiti eat dirt biscuits. It's just not right...