partly because they think there is less need for it since their governments are better at solving social problems.
I’m skeptical of this as an explanation, for basically two reasons:
The anglo-saxon world is generally the most generous, and also has a relatively low level of social problems. Areas with many problems (ex-communist countries, south america, africa) are not particularly generous. source
Much charitable giving goes to things that don’t really address social problems anyway!
Also, Sweden has a very generous refugee politics and receives by far the most asylum seekers in the OECD, which indicates a high level of altruism.
I don’t think this implication works either. Perhaps you could say admitting refugees is altruistic on a national scale, because the immigrants benefit but bring increased violent crime, especially rape, imposing a cost on the ‘giver’. But what we’re looking for is individual altruism, which we can’t really infer from collective altruism: my self-interest is not the same as our collective self-interest, and there is little reason to think it is in my self-interest to vote for our collective self interest. Additionally, if you thought that immigration was a net good thing for the receiving country, accepting immigrants becomes self-interested rather than altruistic on a national level.
I’m skeptical of this as an explanation, for basically two reasons:
The anglo-saxon world is generally the most generous, and also has a relatively low level of social problems. Areas with many problems (ex-communist countries, south america, africa) are not particularly generous. source
Much charitable giving goes to things that don’t really address social problems anyway!
I don’t think this implication works either. Perhaps you could say admitting refugees is altruistic on a national scale, because the immigrants benefit but bring increased violent crime, especially rape, imposing a cost on the ‘giver’. But what we’re looking for is individual altruism, which we can’t really infer from collective altruism: my self-interest is not the same as our collective self-interest, and there is little reason to think it is in my self-interest to vote for our collective self interest. Additionally, if you thought that immigration was a net good thing for the receiving country, accepting immigrants becomes self-interested rather than altruistic on a national level.