1. As others have mentioned, we have the "privilege" of paying taxes first. And what a privilege it is; about 50% of the U.S. population pays $0 in income tax (yes, if they work, they pay SS & Medicare tax, but that is a best thought of as a social insurance premium that entitles one to a benefit later on, not a pure tax).
The federal government spends about
60% of its budget on transfer payments (SS, Medicare, etc.).
http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go Add on top of that the transfer payments done at the state/local level (Medicaid, public school funding, state welfare programs, etc.) and one comes to realize that the U.S. is huge tax-and-transfer welfare state, regardless of left-wing complaining to the contrary. Sure, I would change some of the specifics of these programs to make them fairer (and cheaper!), but the U.S. has not been a "selfish" country for a long time. On top of all the social insurance programs we already have, the U.S. has one of the highest rates of charitable giving as well.
2. Most people do not want to be truly free, because that means having to bear responsibility for the consequences of one's actions. Most people would like license to act, but do not want to bear the burden of their actions. Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan wrote an interesting piece on the topic "Afraid to be Free: Dependency as a Desideratum" (pdf online for free). Ensuring that you can support yourself and not burdening society with your care is one of the noblest things a person can do, it is the opposite of selfish, but in today's world, it's practically countercultural.
3. When Thomas Piketty's book "Capital" came out a few years ago, for many the unthinking response was "SEE, I was right, now enact all of my preferred policies!" I took a different lesson from the book: I should get me some capital. [As an aside, both the data and the conclusions drawn by Piketty have not gone unchallenged, but even accepting it as gospel, pouting about it won't help anything].