Egotism is a human concept that everyone maintains. Ego can be harmful in many ways; America’s ego has made the country not only harmful and greedy to other countries, but in many ways, harmful to its most vulnerable citizens.
From the beginning, the United States sought an internalized policy when it came to world-wide situations. The country would only become involved in affairs such as: free trade, self-defence, and humanitarian emergencies.
Emergencies, however, have been decided by whoever is in the current government of the country. World War II for instance, was not considered an American emergency until the country itself was attacked.
However, on January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national state of energy-emergency, allowing the country to attack Venezuela in January of 2026 in order to remove the dictator, Nicolás Maduro, maintain oil reserves, and “run the country”.
The United States’s media and culture also remains enclosed in the nation itself. Television, news, music, and social media all remain bound within the country.
In 2019, Donald Trump discussed a possible separation between the U.S. and the NATO alliance. This extraction has again been viewed in his 2024 term.
He declared that it was costing the country too much money and questioned the value of the alliance. Trump has since pulled out of many national alliances further isolating the country as a whole.
American economics is largely based around multinational retail companies such as Walmart and Amazon. The United States is worth roughly $180 trillion in 2025, however, the top 1% of the country owns more than 31% of the US’s money.
Investing is the number one way these people make money, leading to the problem of needing to have money in order to make money. Executives, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, make a fraction of their money from the businesses they run and the rest from investments.
This leads to the question: if they have nearly infinite money, why aren’t they sharing it with the people who need it?
The only answer anyone without that money can find is ego. The 1% has never known what it is to be without endless money and are more concerned with maintaining that lifestyle than the state of the remaining 99%.
Much of the upper class believes that if you work hard enough you will get rich. Michael Bloomberg said in 2020 that the reason he deserved the money he got was because he worked “very hard for it”. Bloomberg grew up in a middle class family making him the rare exception to inherited wealth.
However, many wealthy people who believe all you need is hard work were handed all of the work they would have needed to do had they been born to different parents. This leads to the extreme wealth gap in the country, leaving few people with more money than they can spend and many others struggling to survive on the little money they have.
America was built to become an incredible country for all people to follow and achieve their dreams, however, due to the ego of those in power, this dream has fallen short of success.
