Virtue signalling and moral decisions
In the word most how to respond to the refugee crisis, I take come across a new phrase: virtue signalling. Apparently coined by Libby Purves, it involves saying something that has moral appeal just without being founded on any kind of clear thinking. Up till now, when I have read Giles Fraser's public pronouncements, the phrase 'vacuous moral reasoning' has come to listen, but now I have a new phrase to deploy.
Giles' latest Tweets compare Uk and Federal republic of germany'due south responses to the migrant crunch:
Cameron announces we will have xx,000 Syrian refugees over five years. four,000 a twelvemonth. Deutschland taking 800,000. Where is our moral courage?
— Giles Fraser (@giles_fraser) September 7, 2015
Well, let'south have a look shall nosotros, with the assistance of Robert Peston. Peston is as acute in his assay as ever, and points out some challenging realities for Germany every bit it looks into the time to come, courtesy of the European Commission's projections from its Ageing Report that was published earlier this yr.
It projects that Germany'southward population will compress from 81.iii million in 2013 to 70.8 million in 2060, whereas the UK's will ascent from 64.1 million to eighty.1 one thousand thousand…
Information technology is probably relevant that the Committee forecasts that the proportion of the German population in 2060 represented by migrants arriving after 2013 would be nine%, compared with 14% in the Britain. And then Germany would be a lot less multicultural than the UK.
That'south worth hanging on to: U.k. is gear up to accept a larger immigrant population than Frg for a very long time to come. This all has massive implications for something that the Church building is very familiar with for other reasons: population ageing and the pensions crisis.
Every bit for the dependency ratio, the percentage of those 65 and over compared with those aged betwixt 15 and 64, that is forecast to rise from 32% to a very high 59% in Germany by 2060. Or to put it some other way, by 2060 there volition be fewer than two Germans under 65 to work and generate taxes to support each German over 65.
Because people are living longer more or less everywhere, the dependency ratio is likewise set to increase in the UK, but by less – from 27% to 43%. Which yet represents a massive increment in the burden on the younger generation of supporting the onetime, just non as great every bit in Germany.
So Great britain's population is already rising fast (nosotros are set up to go the well-nigh populous country in Europe) and Germany'due south dependency on immature people is going to be much more severe than ours.
Peston stops short of suggesting that this isthe reason why Germany is welcoming refugees—just it certainly makes the implications of the decision very different from the implications of welcoming a similar number in U.k.. That is why a Europe-broad quote system, which some have suggested, would never be feasible. Any shared European action would accept to take into business relationship the different current and future scenarios for unlike Eu members states, and those scenarios vary widely, not least because of past policy and history. Merely information technology is also worth noting the relative merits of the two countries' approach to the issue:
Angela Merkel is creaming off the most economically useful of the aviary seekers, past taking those that accept shown the gumption and initiative to risk life and limb by fleeing to Europe. Precedent suggests they volition be the ones that notice work fastest and impose the to the lowest degree economic brunt on Federal republic of germany or any other host country.
By contrast, David Cameron appears to be doing what many would see equally the more than morally beauteous thing – which is to go to the Syrian camps and invite children and the nigh vulnerable of refugees to Britain. But this version of living up to what the prime number minister calls our moral responsibilities is undeniably more expensive in the short term than giving a welcome to the able-bodied refugees already in Hungary, Greece or Italy, and desperate to come up hither.
And then it is worth reflecting on who is showing the near moral courage.
In a very helpful mail service on his blog, evangelist J John offers some alliterative propose on engaging with this issue: we demand to be involved, intelligent, have integrity and include intercession.
Our compassion should too exist intelligent. This is a crisis that needs to be addressed not simply by the eye merely by the caput. One of the bug of our epitome-driven globe is that it frequently takes pictures or film to stir people into action but the results of such emotional outpourings may be no more than impassioned speeches that don't really attain much.
I think I will stick with the Evangelist Catechism rather than the Loose Canon on this i.
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