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But speaking for my own generation studying economics in the nineties – we were idealistic. In my PhD programme, I was joined by people from all over the world who had great hopes for free trade and sensible economic policy, and what the two could do for their own countries and for the world at large. And yes, the invisible hand has performed many miracles since then. Prosperity has grown by leaps and bounds worldwide. In the past 30 years, 1.2 billion people have risen out of abject poverty. To be more specific, in 1990 some 36% of the world’s population lived on the equivalent of less than two US dollars a day. Now only 9% are that destitute. In the West, globalisation has also been a key to improved living standards and price stability over the past 30 years, with the continuous emergence of new ways to make production cheaper and more efficient by moving it between countries. It also created innumerable international opportunities for well-educated people. But there is a dark side to this upbeat picture. Although globalisation narrowed the gap between rich and poor countries, it widened the income gap within many countries. Although the overall outcome has been profit, the benefits have been distributed unequally, and some groups in society lose out. Income inequality has therefore grown in most Western countries in recent years.