VIEWPOINTS : A Plea to Revamp National Psyche : Horatio Alger Is Out of Step in Today’s World, Reich Contends

Robert B. Reich wants to change the way America thinks.

The Harvard economist and adviser to presidential candidates is advocating what amounts to a rewiring of the national psyche so that--among other things--the country can once again see the Pacific as an ocean of opportunity rather than a briny, one-way freeway for importing foreign goods.

Often going far afield from his chosen discipline, Reich has outlined what he believes are crippling national social attitudes, cultural myths and political beliefs in a new book, “Tales of a New America” (Times Books). His prescriptions for dealing with economic and social problems defy traditional liberal and conservative pigeon-holing.

Asked for Thoughts

It’s apparently a message many want to hear. In the past few months, Reich said in an interview in Los Angeles, Democrats and Republicans alike--including Democratic presidential candidates Gary Hart and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.)--have asked for his thoughts as they gear up for the 1988 election.

Before the 1984 elections, Reich, who advised Democrats Hart and Walter Mondale, published “The Next American Frontier.” That book figured in the pre-election ballyhoo then over the need for “new ideas” to deal with national issues.

In it, Reich decried the nation’s “paper entrepreneurialism,” the asset-shifting financial gimmickry that, he argued, had replaced productivity as the key occupation of management.

This time around, Reich takes on the popular notion that American products are threatened by unfair foreign competition, particularly from Japan.

Smoke Screen

The story behind the story, Reich said, is that many “American” companies actually are Japanese-American hybrids. In fact, Reich sees the Reagan Administration’s recent imposition of punitive duties on Japanese electronics imports as a smoke screen.

“The irony here is that even as American companies complain about Japanese companies being unfair, American companies are scrambling like mad to enter into joint ventures with the Japanese,” he said.

“All of the American auto companies are now getting their advanced electronics, their advanced robotics, their (computer) chips, their engines, from the Japanese. . . . Major American semiconductor firms like Motorola and AT&T; have entered into joint ventures where basically they’re making their chips in Japan now. Texas Instruments is making its most advanced chips in Japan right now. IBM is setting up a research facility in Tokyo. It’s two-faced what the companies are doing.”

By seeking trade protection, American companies are getting a short-lived opportunity for “easy extra cash flow,” Reich said.

“If you can get it (protectionism) and stop Americans from buying Japanese products, then you become the only intermediary between the Japanese product and the consumer and you can rake off some money by doing that.”

In Reich’s view, it’s unfortunate that “most Americans are buying into protectionism” because “they don’t know about all of the joint ventures, they don’t know about the fact that most of the high-tech components in their products are coming from Japan. They assume that when they see somebody on television saying, ‘Be patriotic, buy American,’ that they’re going to get a product that’s American.”

Reich believes that changing America’s cherished beliefs about itself is more important than finding answers to specific problems, such as the trade deficit.

“The challenge is not necessarily coming up with new policies,” he said. “The challenge is coming up with new visions, particularly new versions of classic American stories.”

Reich wants to replace the Horatio Alger story--with its promise that every American can succeed on his own--with something called “collective entrepreneurialism.”

This mouthful is Reich’s way of saying greater equality, cooperation and dedication are needed in the workplace from both workers and managers.

Reich also expands the concept to include much of public life.

In general, his outlook is that Americans too often define their problems in terms of “us against them.” “I think that the new story in place of the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story . . . is the notion that managers, workers and, to some extent, the public sector have the capability of forging a different kind of relationship,” Reich explained.

As an example, he cited Japanese-owned factories in America, where “productivity is much higher than comparable American factories.” In those factories, “top-level managers are not earning 20 times what bottom-level workers earn,” he said.

“They earn, on average, six times. They don’t have plush corner offices. They don’t have special parking lots and cafeterias. They’re usually in glass-enclosed cubicles right in the center of the factory floor. They wear uniforms that are exactly the same as the factory workers’ uniforms. There’s a great deal of profit sharing; there’s a great deal of job security.”

On a recent tour of a Japanese factory in West Virginia, Reich said he was impressed by the fact that “even the pronouns (used by the workers) are different.”

He added: “Talk to an American worker in most companies--and this includes Harvard University--the pronouns are usually ‘they’; they’ve started this or they’ve done it this way. At the factory I toured, the workers said: ‘We’ve done this, now we’re doing this.’ These are American workers. They’re not specially gifted; they haven’t had a religious experience.”

Methods to Adapt

Reich said, however, that he isn’t an advocate of wholesale adoption of Japanese techniques. Rather, he said, the United States should start looking for methods it can adapt from all over the world, noting that the country suffers from economic chauvinism.

Reich also doesn’t place all of the blame on management. American workers are too ready to change jobs at the drop of a hat, he said, noting that “the average design and production engineer stays put with the average high-tech company 2 1/2 years.”

If this country doesn’t “do anything fundamentally different in terms of labor-management relations, in terms of national defense, in terms of unfriendly takeovers, in terms of entrepreneurial excesses, I would say the American standard of living will decline. Since 1973, there’s been no net increase in our standard of living. In fact, there’s some evidence of a slight decline over the last 10 years,” Reich said.

Decline Is Relative

“The decline of nations is usually not measured or evidenced by any absolute decline in their economies,” Reich added.

“Usually a decline of a nation is relative--relative to a very, very rapid increase in the economic prowess of another nation. My concern over the next five to 10 years is that what has happened to England will happen to the United States.”

Yet Reich cautioned that he is not a doom-sayer and noted that he has been described as “a cockeyed optimist” by some critics.

“One of the great, saving graces of Americans has been a willingness and ability to roll up their sleeves and get on with the task, putting ideology aside,” he said. “I believe if the going gets hard enough, there will be a sort of mandate for major changes in the organization of our companies, in our organization of government-business relationships.”