From Mike Nelson by way of Talking Points Memo.
What I got from it:
Life was bad in the usual way, and then the Industrial Revolution made it much better in the West. Then rising Europe turned to colonialism and that created a godawful have/have-not world system that was doomed once the greedy Europeans turned on each other in "world wars." Then the US-style of globalization kicked in, eventually creating the better world we know today by creating the opportunities for the "rest" to advance.
Our polite European host skips all the ugly colonial realities, and instead just notes the tremendous inequality that defined the middle period. It's a painfully selective way to capture the past two centuries.