A harsh truth: The world economy never recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic

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Open this photo in gallery: Epidemic control workers wear PPE to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as they guard an area with communities in lockdown on Dec. 1, 2022, in Beijing.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time among London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall (Yale University Press, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods (Simon and Schuster, 2017). Britain sank into recession this week. So did Japan, with its decline so bad that it lost its spot as the world’s No. 3 economy. It is increasingly apparent that the...