Imagine you have a beloved older relative. An uncle, perhaps, who after a solid career has retired quietly with his wife to a modest home in the country.
Let’s call him Jeff.
There he gardens, goes for long walks and welcomes grandchildren on occasional visits.
Uncle Jeff has been careful with his money. Holidays were carefully-budgeted. He’s never travelled other than economy class.
And his motor car was always second hand.
Through careful saving, uncle Jeff and your aunt are living comfortably, dispensing generous seasonal and birthday gifts to family members.
Then one day on a visit with your family you see there is a Ferrari in the front drive.
It’s top of the range, brand new and yellow.
How would you react?
First you’d assume it wasn’t his. But Jeff tells you it is.
On the way home, you discuss the Ferrari. Jeff has never even liked cars, so why get one so expensive and showy now?
Is this the first sign of a sudden change in personality and behavior?
And what’s next? A girlfriend half his age? The revelation of a secret gambling compulsion?
Has he gone mad?
This is how many outside the US have felt since Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election last month.
They believe America has profoundly and suddenly changed, and for the worst. Across the world, political scientists are reviewing settled models about voting and social behavior in the US. A thousand Phds have been started about what’s happened and what’s gone wrong.
It’s America’s yellow Ferrari moment.
There is, however, an alternative explanation for Jeff’s behaviour.
In fact, he’s exactly the same as he was before he got the Ferrari.
All that’s happened is that Jeff has met a very persuasive Ferrari salesperson.
America too is essentially the same now as it was before 8 November. Voting figures show Trump got roughly the number of votes that Republican presidential candidates Romney and McCain did.
The overwhelming majority of African Americans and most American women and Latinos voted for Clinton as did most lower income people. Most Christians voted as they have done in recent presidential polls and backed the Republican presidential candidate. Clinton lost to Trump but got more votes.
What’s different this time is that the Republican was a businessman – not a politician – who maximised his potential vote and suppressed enthusiasm for his opponent with techniques every successful salesman uses.
Trump’s victory was built on his fame created by The Apprentice reality TV show; the relentless targeting of older white voters with messages about jobs, law and order and immigration; and his understanding that people are mainly motivated by ideas that are apparently irrational: emotion and identity.
In business – and now, perhaps, in politics – the most persuasive salesperson always wins. Feelings nearly always trump facts. The well-informed didact – Clinton in this case – will invariably lose to the fluent showman.
That Trump won is less important than the fact that the power of persuasive political salesmanship has been demonstrated. It’s happened once and will happen again and not just in the US.
This trend is underpinned by the rise of intangible commodities in advanced economies.
The majority of output and employment is now due to service industries. Increasingly, these industries neither need tangible inputs nor have tangible outputs.
What’s being created, sold and bought are appealing and persuasive ideas.
The Ferrari in uncle Jeff’s garage exists but doesn’t matter.
It’s what’s going on inside his head – and inside yours and mine – that really counts in the intangible era.