How has the 21st century gone so wrong?

“NEVER before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats,” Bill Clinton exulted in his last State of the Union address, on Jan 27, 2000. The Nasdaq had reached 4,000, a nearly sixfold increase in seven years. Unemployment had shrunk to 3 per cent, the lowest in more than a generation. Having borne the burden of the Cold War, the American people were now reaping the peace dividend. The Republicans’ champion, George W Bush, offered “compassionate conservatism” as an alternative to Democrats’ “compassionate liberalism”.

Abroad, the news was equally bright. The Europeans had introduced both a single market and a single currency and were well on their way to becoming a “United States of Europe”. The once mighty Communist international had dwindled to Cuba, North Korea and a few university departments. World trade in manufactured goods had doubled in the 1990s and would double again in the 2000s. Global poverty was receding faster than ever before.

A quarter of a century later, the mood could not be more different. A sizeable majority of the global population – three in five people – believe that the world is getting worse. This is as true in traditionally optimistic America (which has just elected an irascible 78-year-old to succeed a faltering 82-year-old) as it is in stagnating Europe.