Yes. If you don't eat, you starve. If you live on the street, you are not very likely to eat. That is suffering by definition.
To answer your question: the growth of the government is not the only factor creating our present predicament. This is the simplistic thinking of today's right who seem incapable of synthesizing for themselves our country's history, so in a very, very rough sense, let me point out a few milestones on the road to here where people can and do starve in a nation of wealth (all dates are approximate):
1. End of WWII - American Dream backed by GI bill - All is good.
2. 1960s - Vietnam & Nixon Power Quake - beginning of American skepticism and distrust of government.
3. 1970s - Beginning of professionalization of middle-class and end beginning of the end of self-sufficiency. Emergence of super stores altering local economies. End of small town America.
4. 1980s - Reagan and Wall street popularize greed ethos as new version of American Dream. Emergence of international competition with Japan. Beginning of end for US manufacturing base as offshoring begins. Celebrity and tabloid culture launches with MTV, Enquirer, etc. American nuclear family begins to crumble.
5. 1990s - Continued deregulation by Greenspan. Decade of consumption. Illusion of prosperity and then Dot Com Bust. Thai real estate bubble bursts and richochets around the world but warning is ignored. OJ Simpson trial signals victory of celebrity culture over critical civic culture. World trade agreements proliferate and globalization explodes. U.S. exports surge and dollar strengthens. Powder keg waiting to happen.
6. 2000s - 9/11. Overreaction leads to birth of increased domestic surveillance and fear-mongering. End of Depression era safeguards, banker greed leads to poor quality lending and over-leverage of credit market. Housing bubble is created and amplified by exotic derivative exposure setting up 2008-2010 brouhaha. Inflated housing market finally blows up. Decade of excess consumption through credit blows up. Offshoring rampant. Treasury is held hostage by bankers then ransacked by outgoing administration and its buddies. People are facing living on the streets.
7. 2008+ - Election of African American president with backing of enthusiastic support of progressive majority. Right wing skepticism+angry white voter who is poorly educated and bewildered manifests as anti-intellectualism. Republican takes advantage of this gullibility and realigns working class interests against own interests as campaign to seize White House in 2012; party and conservative cable news obfuscate using scapegoating of a cosmopolitan president dealt a crappy hand, and by using racial and elitism fear-mongering. Minorities voices, and liberal concerns become visible nationwide but are marginalized by McCarthyrite bullying (the cry of Socialism). Greed ethos is the American Dream and behind every monied Holy Grail and despite all evidence to the contrary, the poor provide socialized assistance to corporations, banks, and in 2010, through tax cuts for the wealthy in hopes of a crumb falling to the floor for them.
8. 2010 - President attempts to triangulate a la Clinton, not realizing his mandate to restore America to the progressive country it once was, and allows the plutocracy to entrench itself with, incredibly, working class support. President underestimates his foes' intransigence. President ticks off his progressive base
9. 2011 - Progressives dress down the President and compel him to move left and restore the American Dream. OR Conservatives prevail and the very wealthy continue historical trend since 1980s of taking home a greater percentage of national wealth with no trickle down to the working class. Middle class is further eviscerated. Anger poor whites will do worse. Middle class real income will stay level as it has since 1980s.
10. 2016 - This is wild peculation only: Minorities will field finally true field of progressive candidates, or 2 new parties will emerge, a Tea Party offshoot, and Democratic offshoot.
Okay that is American political, cultural, social, economic history from 1945 to today.