EDIT> Also, it's not like we're just bystanders. The whole economic system that allows people like us to go on cruises has been built on centuries of violence, propping up of corrupt but useful allies, and at best turning a blind eye to human rights abuses. Sure, that's the past and things are getting better, but we are complicit at some level, not entirely bystanders.
There is a lot of hardship on Earth that I would give anything to fix. I can only do my best to be a good person and treat others well and hopefully if we all do the same our grandchildren will be that much closer to paradise.
Certainly some were "starving, diseased, and absolutely poor".
But many were funded colonists. And, "Between the 1630s and the American Revolution, one-half to two-thirds of white immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies arrived under indentures" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude_in_the_Am...
"These cities didn't just magically pop into existence it's the product of hard work and being a good person and citizen."
Oklahoma City did "pop into existence". Within 12 hours of noon, April 22, 1889, it had a population of 10,000 people.
But you're right, it wasn't "magic" - it was the product of kicking Native Americans off the land and giving it to white people in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.
That highlights how your narrative omits a couple of other sources of prosperity in the American experience:
- living in areas that the Native American population had already settled
- slavery
300 years ago, Boston and Newport were important slave ports, and "In Rhode Island colony, as much as two-thirds of the merchant fleet and a similar fraction of sailors were engaged in slave traffic." - http://slavenorth.com/profits.htm
"Slavery was very substantial in early Manhattan. Very early on, the populations of enslaved people began to grow. By 1740, enslaved people were one-fifth of the population of the early city, and enslaved black men were one-third of the work force." - from an interview with Anne Farrow, co-author of the book "Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery" at https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=504237... .
Northerners profited from supplying the Caribbean sugar plantations, all run on slave labor.
Even after slavery was abolished in the North, the US economy was integrated. Northern textile mills processed Southern cotton. Northern shipwrights made ships to carry Southern cotton. Southern cotton picked by slaves.
I don't think you can deny that slavery was an important part of the success of the American colonies during the time ("a few hundred years ago") that solotronics mentioned.