The economic trend is our friend

THESE are days of grave disillusionment with the state of the world. Sinister forces of fanatical, faith-based killing - something that we in the West, at least, thought had largely ended by 1750 - are back. And they have been joined by (and are reinforcing) forces of nationalism, bigotry and racism that we thought had been largely left in the ruins of Berlin in 1945.

In addition, economic growth since 2008 has bee…