Just as every teenager thinks he is brighter than his parents, every decade considers itself superior to the one that came before. Over the past few months, we of the 2000 decade have made it quite clear that we are morally heads above those who lived in the 1990s. We’ve done it first by establishing a reigning cliché for that period. Just as the 1960s are known for student unrest, the 1980s for Reagan, Thatcher and the Yuppies, the 1990s will henceforth be known as the second Gilded Age. They will be known as the age when the real problems in the world were ignored while the illusions of the dotcom types were celebrated. It was the age of effortless abundance, cell phones on every ear, stock markets that only went up and Mercedes sport utility vehicles. Never before had business leaders enjoyed so much prestige, and never before had capitalism had fewer mortal enemies. Bill Gates couldn’t be on enough business-magazine covers; tycoons like him felt free to assume the role of global sages, writing books with such weighty titles as “The Road Ahead.”