Wants and needs: philosophy or economics?

Under the subheading of "you learn something new every day," this afternoon a student was working on a paper with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as her topic. Smith, an 18th century Scottish philosopher and economist, is often quoted (see Adam Smith quotes) concerning economic growth and human nature. Unable to verify him as authoring the statement she wished to paraphrase in her paper, "to an economist there are no needs, only wants," a short, pithy explanation of the concept was located from another source.

In a resource center full of education students having basic psychology course requirements, discussion of how this philosophy contradicts Maslow's hierachy needs ensued. What about the simple human needs learned in social studies for food, shelter, and water? Are needs really only vocalization of wants? While differentiating between wants and needs should be easy, the concept of there actually being no needs at all was unthinkable.

Playing the devils advocate was a challenge since I don't buy into the economists theory, but looking at wants and needs in this way was intriguing:

• We need to eat.
  Not necessarily, we can choose not to and be hungry.
• If we don't eat, we die.
  Sure, but we choose to eat and live. That fulfills a want.
• We need shelter.
  We can live outside, choosing shelter fulfills our want to be in out of the weather.
• We need clothes to stay warm in the winter.
  We don't need to wear winter coats, we do because we want to stay warm (and not die).
• The computer needs electricity to work.
  No, we need the electricity to make the computer work. The computer can sit turned off, turning it on fulfills our need to use it.

So, I wanted to wear shoes to work today (was required to actually), but did not need to do so. Taking it a step further, I really wanted to wear the raspberry clogs because they went nicely with my new spring sweater set. I do not need the coupon I got via email today for 30% off purchases at a local retail outlet. I sure do want it, I need new shoes!

Glad I'm not an economist.