At almost any other point of time you could have made a similar list with the relevant issues of the time. The news cycle today is so much more accessible, and is skewed towards pessimism, so your view of the world will also skew that way depending how much news you consume. Trying to condense the world state into "getting better" vs "getting worse" is not a useful exercise, its anyone's guess. The world is definitely changing though, and many people don't like that.