9 for the ‘90s : Be They 9 or 89, Individuals Harbor Strong Ideas About What the Future Holds : A Darker Outlook

He’s 19. He spends his summers studying economics in Japan. And he’s convinced the ‘90s will bring the “rapid decline of the U.S. economy” and the sale of much more of the country to the Japanese, Western Europe or whatever part of the world can afford it.

And get this: Steve Lerner, a UC Santa Cruz sophomore from Long Beach, thinks the United States will eventually wind up profiting from all this.

But first the downside.

“Our debtors are going to call for their money, and we’re not increasing any kind of income for our government and industry,” says Lerner, an economics major with a minor in Japanese studies. “Despite the increases in technology, currently our factory workers are becoming less and less skilled. . . . We should plan to sell what’s left of this country to the Japanese, or Western Europe, whoever. Because our current government is incapable of running our economy, somebody else will have to--whichever governments or industries are most capable will have to do it. If our government were a business, it would be bankrupt.”

In Lerner’s view, there’s no need to assess blame for any of this: “Sixty percent of businesses fail when they first start out,” he explains. “Our country is new, and it failed. No one in particular is to blame. It’s just that we need to be replaced by somebody who’s more efficient and capable of running a society in today’s world of scarce resources.”

Not that the Japanese are perfect. Lerner isn’t happy that many Japanese “drink excessively on a nightly basis.” And he points out that the Japanese will gain much from the United States, particularly in the realm of leisure: “They’re going to learn how to build leisure parks, water slide parks. They may even learn how to play football. Employees at Japanese corporations are demanding more leisure.”

Now for the good news. Lerner is convinced turning over more of the country to the Japanese will eventually lead to better conditions for Americans.

The Japanese “can live with 20 million people in one city (Tokyo) and have almost no incidences of domestic violence or rape,” he points out. “In business, they value their employees most--above everything except the customer. Here, management cares only about short-term profits. We have terrible health care, terrible insurance policies, not enough education scholarships and inadequate maternal leave. We treat our employees like pack animals, but that attitude is going to end our economic power in the world. As a result, business will have to become more of a primary social unit.”

Indeed, given increasing interchange with Japan, Lerner figures both countries stand to gain in the long run.

“I don’t know if the United States can ever regain the power it had,” he says. “The Japanese have a lot of problems, too, but between our ideas and theirs, I think we can work out a really great system.”