Kill the Messenger? Nah. Kill the Stenographer who WRITES the message!

Recently I read an essay by Oscar G. DePineres, Ph.D. outlining "Maslou's triangle" (sic) of human expectations and motivations, and related the outsourcing of jobs to Americans' rising standards for wages and benefits. He states, "corporations are telling the American worker without disclosing this fact is that our high labor cost has become noncompetitive in the present world." He goes on to say that "we are no longer able to produce quality and inexpensive goods at the high wages we have been accustomed to. Remove this layer of comfort we have become accustomed to, and you really have in your hands a cry-foul upraise of American workers. Politicians must face the music and be honest telling the naked truth to the American worker. There is no other way in Maslou’s theory, for corporations to stay competitive in the world and at home than job outsourcing. "

Hmmmm.

Now, I am no PhD. I'm merely a homekeeper and artist who tries to stay fairly well informed with a variety of sources, ranging from the liberal to the conservative. (BBC to WSJ and The Weekly Standard)

I think the Dr. is speaking of Abraham Maslow, whose work I am quite familliar with. I used the theory myself in motivating and keeping productive relatively low-paid workers, while reporting to well to do and up to highly paid owners. I worked with upper middle class portfolio managers while selling high-end apartments as a Resident Manager. I sold leases 20 to 40% over the market rate and stayed at 98% occupancy while my neighbors lost money though they were priced lower and had an 80% occupancy rate. How?

In a word, Maslow. Maslow speaks to how each person is motivated. His "Heirarchy of Need" is a study in human nature and NOT wage or price controls. Yes, his scale is a pyramid, because so many are stuck at a lower level of need. According to his theory, you cannot be motivated by a higher need UNLESS AND UNTIL the lower needs are met FIRST. ANYONE is prone to theft and low productivity if they are not compensated enough to meet what they consider their needs. Hence both blue and white collar crime.

Maslow helped to define why rich people cheat and why some of the most severely underemployed are self actualized people. His Heirarchy of Need explains why Hollywood is filled with fame seekers and why obscure artists can reach incredible levels of fluency and deftness. His scale has more to do with PERCIEVED needs than it does with actual possessions or circumstances.

For the curious or ill informed - one can only hope Dr. DePineres is familliar with the Curmudgeon's work - here is Dr. Abraham Maslow's Heirarchy of Need in a nutshell:

Base level: "basic physiological needs" such as food, shelter and water are the priority to people on this level. These are basic survival needs, and often people on this level are motivated by near desperation. There is a direct connection between income/resources and happiness and fulfillment.

Second level: safety and security are important. A better neighborhood, a decent diet, a dependable source of income are the priorities on this level. These people also experience a direct connection between their circumstances/resources and their happiness and sense of fulfillment.

Third level: belonging and social needs are what motivates people on this level. Praise, comeraderie, emotional connectivity and personal recognition are vital to these people. Interpersonal conflict, lack of teamwork and rigidity or dismissal of personal needs (i.e. sickness, family, etc) frustrates these people. Employers who can develop a sense of connection to their workers and who deal effectively with diffusing conflicts have happy, fulfilled workers at this level. It is difficult to quantify this need, it is far less able to be quantified than the first two and yet it is vital to meet this level and feel fulfilled in this area or you cannot reach the next level.

Fourth level: esteem and status motivate people on the fourth level. These people crave memberships to exclusive clubs, parties or receptions at places that enhance social status, awards, celebrity, fame, recognition in the papers - all these things can fill the desires of these people for external esteem and status.

Fifth level: self actualization. These people need no external cues to determine their worth or to meet their needs for happiness and fulfillment. They are able to find fulfillment from within.


An important caveat to remember: a person who has no external esteem extended to them at all cannot -by definition- be self actualized. People at the highest levels (four and five) have their needs for connection, safety and survival met coherently enough to focus on loftier goals.

To suggest that Maslow's work be used to convince Americans that their standard of living is too high is a major co-option of his work. Further, America is the ONLY industrialized nation that allows the gap between the executives and wage earners to be a difference of 500% or more!!

When a corporation outsources 30,000 jobs the same year it metes out bonuses to executives equal to 500,000 wage earners' jobs (or more!!) the problem has NOTHING to do with Maslow and America's standard of living and wages. It has more to do with the greed of our boardrooms than it does the avarice of our populace.

Respectfully, I cannot follow Dr. DePineres' logic. Maslow's Heirarchy is clear: the needs progress, not only from the physical to increasingly cerebral and emotional needs, but in less desperate, less instinctual ways. To demand that American workers go against their nature and embrace corporate shenanigans that embody displaced ethics and unbalanced rewards sytsems is silly. There are uncommon people I have met who manage to give 150% despite their working conditions, and [I]all [/I] of these people are American workers.

When these workers see that they will never be compensated fairly, they leave their employer, as any sensible person would. To encourage US workers to turn a blind eye to the lopsided values of Enron, et al, is to encourage a kind of psychic and economic schizophrenia.

the curmudgeon