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Maslow's Pyramid of Needs. Hierarchical model of human needs
Let the economists, financial analysts, political pundits, and lobbyists argue, debate, and bloviate all they want about Trump’s tariffs; they’ll neither satisfactorily explain them nor will they win their arguments about them.
That’s because, as long as they stay within the arena of economics, they won’t be able to see outside the proverbial box – because that box was built using their own constructs. It’s subjective with no chance of achieving objectivity. The problem is, they don’t see the world the way it is; they see the world the way they are. We all do, actually. The answer is hidden not in the economics calculations. It’s elsewhere.
American creativity will suffer.
Looking beyond the immediate and measurable increase in the cost of eggs and cars and just about everything else, the more long-term and certainly more abstract element of the upheaval caused by the Trump tariffs is American creativity. In virtually every field, what contributed to American success more than anything else over our history was American creativity, and in this essay, I will connect a few dots for you to prove that it is under attack – by our very own leader, no less. You can always recoup manufacturing advantage or financial advantage or almost any other. But when you give away creative advantage, you don’t get it back.
An Outsider’s Look at the Economy
When you’re done listening to the economists, industrialists, and financiers – with their MBAs, PhDs, and prizes – please give my theory some thought. I come from the world of Psychology, and I have a particularly strong commitment to the humanistic school of psychology, that branch developed in the 1950s and 1960s by Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), who did more to change the way we think about human motivation than anyone else ever did.
Over the course of 25 years, I provided consulting and leadership advice to corporations, nonprofits, and educational institutions spanning 25 industries, much of which rested on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow, of course, built it to explain human motivation and subsequent behavior; I’ve taken it a step further, positing that it just as well explains organizational motivation, success, and failure. Let’s start with a simple explanation from Psych 101.
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