The problem seems to be that Americans are willing to suffer a lot of personal loss as long as they can ensure someone else suffers even more.

There’s a similar joke about Russians:

A genie says to a Russian, “I will grant you one wish.”

The Russian says, “I want a million dollars.”

The genie says, “… but whatever I give you, I will give your neighbor two of.”

The Russian responds, “Well in that case, I want a poke in the eye!”

Humans display a reduced set of consistent behavioral phenotypes in dyadic games https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451