NEW YORK — Thirty-five years ago, the world experienced an epochal change with the collapse of European communism. Francis Fukuyama famously called this moment the "end of history," predicting that all societies would eventually converge toward liberal democracy and market economies. Today, it is almost a cliché to observe how wrong that prediction was. With the return of Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, perhaps we should call the current era the "end of progress."
Most of us take progress for granted. But we should remember that living standards 250 years ago were a little different from what they were 2,500 years ago. Not until the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution did we achieve the enormous improvements in life expectancy, health and living standards that have defined modernity.
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