Globalisation has helped lift millions of people in the developing world out of poverty and showered cheap goods on western consumers. Yet at the ballot box it is also blamed by those very same people for increasing inequality and squeezing living standards.
Pro-globalisation politicians are facing a noisy backlash in Europe and the US as populists demand greater protection for those who feel the system has been rigged. In their view, globalisation is an “innocent fraud”, to use John Kenneth Galbraith’s phrase.
The US economist argued in his 2004 book of that name that societies were often sustained by handy fictions, such as the idea that companies were run for the benefit of shareholders rather than managers. Politics, money and intellectual fashion create their own version of the truth, irrespective of reality. “No one is especially at fault; what is convenient to believe is greatly preferred,” Galbraith wrote.