a better start in life through better nutrition, healthcare and education. In all of these areas, governments intervene. The relative focus on equality of outcome and equality of opportunity vary, but the desirability of intervention is no longer a matter of serious disagreement. On a global scale, the gross inequalities of the early 1900s have been eroded. In the mid-1900s empires were dissolved and modernising governments came to power. Influenced by Soviet success, most regimes adopted economic systems with a heavy state hand, which succeeded initially in mobilising resources, but whose limitations were clear by the 1970s. In the final quarter of the twentieth century, country after country adopted more market-based systems and integrated into the global economy. These emerging economies included some of the world's most populous countries, i.e. China, Mexico, India, Brazil, Indonesia and many more. Emerging economies: Mixed models The emerging economies are clearly market-based, but none embraces pure capitalism. Even Hong Kong, the most capitalist economy even while a colony, provided efficient social services and universal public education and healthcare. By the early 2000s, the market economy, and associated pressures for liberty and equality, held undisputed status as the desirable economic system. This is not the end of history. Debates, rightly, rage in democratic market economies about the appropriate balance between market-driven prosperity and state-mediated equality. In the US the current focus is on healthcare, and in Europe and Australasia on funding for tertiary education. In all countries, aging populations and archaic pension rights pose serious