There are always plenty of reasons to be pessimistic in any age (and being anti-utopian is not even pessimism). I think our current bout is partly a reaction against the rhetoric of Right-Neoliberalism (as I have now learned to call it). Rather than refute head-on the idea that there was a steep or near infinite trade-off between growth and equity, a certain progressive strain of thought decided, so much the worse for growth. "Sour grapes." Maybe the worst aspect of this is the zero-growth, neo-arcadianism attitude to climate change.
There are always plenty of reasons to be pessimistic in any age (and being anti-utopian is not even pessimism). I think our current bout is partly a reaction against the rhetoric of Right-Neoliberalism (as I have now learned to call it). Rather than refute head-on the idea that there was a steep or near infinite trade-off between growth and equity, a certain progressive strain of thought decided, so much the worse for growth. "Sour grapes." Maybe the worst aspect of this is the zero-growth, neo-arcadianism attitude to climate change.