I think we're a lot better informed than the people of the Capitol, or at least capable of being so. The government of Panem controls the media, for the Capitol citizenry as much as for the people of the Districts; there's no unauthorized travel and no independent telecommunications. Which means that not only does your average Capitol citizen not know what it's like in (say) the coal mines of District Twelve, a Capitol citizen will probably never even meet anybody who's ever spoken to anybody who knows what it's like.

And I think it would be possible, given the right cultural conditions, to distance people even more from suffering and death in their own lives. It wouldn't be hard at all to make dying people disappear -- relatives could be denied access to hospitals, and the death of a loved one could appear only in the form of a phone call.

I wonder what the violent crime rate is like in the Capitol.