NP - Why the Euro Is a Selfish Jerk

[David Morris]

Hitting The Nail On The Head:

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/euro-ingroup-bias

the Euro creators should have thought harder about what social scientists
have learned about how compassion and cultural identity interact.

In asking nations to entrust their economic fate to the Euro, its designers
were assuming that Europeans have a reservoir of goodwill among them. That
goodwill was supposed to ensure, for example, that no prospective member
had to worry that a powerful member would use its Euro-derived leverage to
turn the screws on a weaker member which was—to pick an example out of thin
air—wracked by colossal levels of debt, unemployment and economic misery
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/10/greeces-poor-are-back-to-where-they-were-in-1980/>
.

But that's exactly what the Germans have done to the Greeks. Why aren't the
Germans overcome with sympathy for the Greeks? It's not that Germans are
selfish or hard-hearted: after all, they have spent ten times the current
GDP of Greecehelping the economically struggling people of the former East
Germany <http://fortune.com/2014/11/09/germany-east-west-economy/>.

Social psychology researchers
<http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2014-09886-001/> have identified a
powerful in group bias in willingness to help others, whether it's hiring
someone for a job or supporting social welfare programs for the poor. Human
beings are, in short, more inclined to help other people whom we perceive
as being a member of our tribe.

Human psychology wouldn't cause as many problems for the Euro if there was
a strong European identity, if a West German was as likely to consider an
East German a tribe member as they would a Greek or a Spaniard or an
Italian. But when most Germans and Greeks look at each other, they
fundamentally see someone who speaks a different language and hails from a
different culture with a different history—and for that matter was a
military enemy within living memory.

With no shared sense of tribe comes a sharp reduction in compassion and
attendant willingness to help.  The elites who designed the Euro may
genuinely have believed and even felt a sense that Europe is all about
"us", but the currency's recent struggles show that for too many Europeans,
it's more about us and them.
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