Surplus: The History of Too Much and the End of Economic Primacy
About this audiobook
What happens when capitalism becomes so successful that the problem is no longer too little—but too much?
In Surplus, economist and market strategist Marc Chandler traces the extraordinary rise of economic abundance from the earliest agricultural civilizations to today’s world of overflowing capital, soaring asset prices and unprecedented productive capacity. He argues that many of the forces destabilizing modern societies—from widening inequality and financial speculation to political discontent and environmental excess—are symptoms of a profound transition: we have created an economic system extraordinarily good at producing wealth, but have yet to build institutions capable of managing its abundance.
Drawing on economics, history, politics and philosophy, Chandler shows how earlier surpluses transformed civilizations—and argues that today’s surplus gives us an opportunity to do so again. Provocative and ultimately hopeful, Surplus asks what comes after scarcity, and how we might build a society that measures progress not simply by how much wealth it creates, but by what that wealth makes possible.
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About the author
Marc Chandler is one of the most highly respected and widely quoted currency experts in the US today, with more than three decades of experience analyzing the global capital markets and advising private businesses, hedge funds, and major public institutions on policy and market behavior. He currently serves as Chief Market Strategist at Bannockburn Capital Markets. Chandler appears regularly on major media outlets such as CNBC, FOX Business, and Bloomberg TV and Radio. His writing and commentary have been featured by Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The Nation, and the Washington Post, among others.
Donald Corren is an audiobook narrator and a New York actor with leading credits on and Off-Broadway, as well as numerous television appearances. On Broadway, he costarred with Judy Kaye in the critically acclaimed production of Souvenir, and replaced Harvey Fierstein in the seminal production of Torch Song Trilogy. His Off-Broadway appearances include The Soap Myth, Dietrich & Chevalier, The Last Sunday in June, Stephen Sondheim’s Saturday Night, and the original New York production of Tomfoolery. His television credits include eight seasons as forensic tech Medill on NBC’s Law & Order, as well as his current role as Dr. Kurian on Syfy’s Z Nation.