And yet more and more and more US citizens need food stamps. That doesn't sound like a success.
That's simply not true. It's a misreading of the USDA's food security survey results, wherein the standard for "food insecurity"[1] is
[R]eports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.
Note the second sentence. Hunger is not a "reality" for your family just because the USDA judges you to have "low food security".
[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/foo...
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-r...
From your link, of those that reported "very low food security":
96 percent reported that an adult had cut the size of meals or skipped meals because there was not enough money for food.
89 percent reported that this had occurred in 3 or more months.
95 percent of respondents reported that they had eaten less than they felt they should because there was not enough money for food.
68 percent of respondents reported that they had been hungry but did not eat because they could not afford enough food.
47 percent of respondents reported having lost weight because they did not have enough money for food.
29 percent reported that an adult did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food.
23 percent reported that this had occurred in 3 or more months.
*Edited for formatting of percent breakdown
Smartphones are cheap in both time and money. You can have an iPhone in the US for twenty dollars a month, and all you have to do is recharge it every so often.
Food costs a lot more each month. This testament to capitalism is that people can't afford food but that's okay because they can have something that costs less; a phone.
My point is that capitalism allows a significant majority of people to have the basic necessities of life taken care of in exchange for some other contribution to the world.
Fair enough. My point is that something is going very wrong, as here we are in what is apparently some kind of recovery yet in the United States, one of the richest nations in the world, more people need food stamps than before. Luxury? A phone is cheap. It's not a luxury. Food is becoming a luxury. This didn't happen last time, or the time before that.