ABSTRACT
While many people would argue that environmental deterioration constitutes by far the greatest industrial problem facing the world in the twenty-first century, there is no question that other industrial issues gained greater attention in the years after 2008, from a variety of world leaders and a variety of ordinary voters as well. The Great Recession highlighted a wider development in the industrial world: the disparity between robust growth rates in several of the newer economies and the sluggish performance of most of the advanced industrial regions. In many countries around the world, the Great Recession also highlighted the increase in economic inequalities during the latest phase of industrial history. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, new economic dislocations, rising global competition, and troubling inequalities directly generated important signs of frustration, particularly but not exclusively in the advanced industrial economies.
