You started with the wrong question.
There are very few societies today where people don't need money to be able to function within their society. Hence it is for everyone in such societies important to have it. Hence this isn't about the importance of money, but the importance of materialism on a personal base.
No.
First of all you can't choose where you are born. It is not my fault that I am not poor, just as much as it is nobody's fault to be born in a slumb.
The Capitalist system however and especially the US type focusses on the gathering of money as if that should be everybody's first and most important goal in life.
Those who don't/can't follow this are looked as "incompetent" or "lazy" or "loosers".
This is the direct result of Capitalism's need to constantly create and sustain the want for superficial goods = to create, sustain and relentlessly encourage consumerism. To get and sustain such a society its inhabitants *must* be indoctrinated with the idea and belief that creation of wealth is a first necessity in their life. For that everything else must be make room.
First make money, then spend it, then think you live because you have money and can spend it, then maybe get a life when you are almost old enough to drop dead. (the so called "midlife crisis" when people all of a sudden want to "start all over again.)
salaam.
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