I'm not sure I disagree with you in this specific case, but I think it's fairly easy to tweak some of the details (is there identification in the wallet? Is it obvious it's been missing for an extended period? What if it's not money, but some possession?) and vastly change the percentage of people that would respond one way or another, even when there might not really be much ethical difference.

That said, I was mostly pointing towards what I see as an explanation for the difference in attitudes regarding wealth and poverty and how it intersects with peoples opinions of personal responsibility, which I think does have a place in that scenario, even if it's not always the primary driver.

>who believe with all of their heart that God wanted them to find it

Yeah OP is way off on his God scapegoat. People in the West are far more likely to not return a lost wallet due to the wide variance in cultural identity. Japanese people have such a shared identity which promotes a level of empathy that only Americans in small towns could hope to replicate. Call it hospitality. Religion has nothing to do with it.

I'm not sure about that. I've seen multiple threads on reddit about cases where someone was overtipped or accidentally transferred money and there's usually a lot of comments arguing why they shouldn't have to return the money.