As someone who was born and raised overseas, I would say they take up a much larger space in the American psyche though.

Oh hell no. Spend some time in Asian countries and you’ll see capitalism and the love of money comes very naturally.

Everybody loves money.

> "Everybody loves money."

Yeah, not everybody. I love some of the things that money can buy, buy I genuinely hate money. Love of money brings out the absolute worst in humanity far too often, and lack of enough money causes entirely too much misery. The old phrase "money is the root of all evil" isn't all that far off from true. Greed and love of money are the cause of more problems on this planet than I can count (and I'm pretty damned good at counting).

It is human nature to be greedy, because this is how we evolved.

What causes problems is inequality, not money per se.