Surplus

Between March 2009 and February 2025, the S&P 500 index rose by more than 700%. In the same period, gold tripled in value, the average American home doubled in price, and cryptocurrencies crashed into existence and then soared to a total valuation of $3 trillion. But this vast accumulation of wealth is not a sign of economic health. The world is now awash with so much money that investors struggle to find productive outlets for their cash. In Surplus, leading economic thinker Marc Chandler argues that too much of a good thing can bring a society to its knees. After decades of striving for more, humanity is now at risk of suffocating under the weight of an unprecedented economic surplus - a global excess of both capital and productive capacity that has grown so large that it is impossible to accommodate. This surplus has already reshaped the societies we live in, fostering inequality and creating social and political strains that threaten the foundations of the Western world order. Surplus: The History of Too Much and the End of Economic Primacy offers a unified theory of surplus, tracing how surpluses have shaped human societies from the first agricultural surpluses that enabled the rise of cities and complex civilizations, to today's unprecedented global surplus of goods and capital, to show how different forms of surplus have repeatedly forced societies to develop new institutional arrangements and value systems. Today we face another such transformation, one that challenges the dominance of pure market thinking just as previous surpluses challenged earlier social orders. Our current challenges are neither unprecedented nor insurmountable, but rather part of a recurring pattern of change to which societies must find new ways to adapt. We are not witnessing the end of capitalism, but rather its evolution toward a more nuanced understanding of human flourishing. In this thoughtful examination of our economic evolution, Chandler argues that we need to rethink capitalism itself: we must cultivate new views of what it means to be prosperous, find new ways of balancing freedom and equality, allow environmental protection to take precedence over pure profit maximization, and enable broader concerns about social equity to be taken seriously once more basic needs are met. Surplus signals that the supremacy of economic values over other social goods is coming to an end and shows us a way forward to a healthier economic world for all.