Superabundance Calculator

Everyone has 24 hours a day, so how we use them matters. Time prices tell us how long we have to work to buy something. The less time we spend earning money to buy that thing, the more time we have for loved ones, exercise, or relaxation.

Time price is calculated by dividing the nominal price of an item by the nominal hourly wage at the time of purchase. For example, if a banana cost $0.50 and you earn $10 an hour, the time price is 3 minutes of work. If the price rises to $0.60 and your wage increases to $18, the time price drops to 2 minutes.

You can now buy 1.5 times as many bananas for an hour of work, meaning your “personal bananas abundance” increased by 50 percent.

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Charting the Change in Abundance

Population resource abundance is the product of personal resource abundance and population. It can be visualized as a rectangle. The vertical axis represents personal resource abundance, which measures how much of a resource a person can buy with an hour of work. The horizontal axis represents the number of people. The area of the resulting rectangle (personal abundance × population) is the population abundance for a given resource. It measures how much of a resource the population as a whole can earn together. For instance, if an average person earns enough to buy 5 units of a resource per hour, three people can collectively earn enough to buy 15 units of the same resource per hour.

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Superabundance

The story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet.

ANGUS DEATON, Nobel Prize–winning economist

“With great writing and a mountain of good evidence, Tupy and Pooley remind us that we are immeasurably better off than our ancestors. In this day of pestilence, war, and climate change, we need that reminder, and we can hope that the doom-mongers will be wrong about the future, just as they have always been wrong about the past.”

PAUL ROMER, Nobel Prize winning economist and former chief economist, World Bank

“As the number of humans grew from millions to billions, the much-feared crisis of resource scarcity turned out to be a mirage. Fifty years ago, the Club of Rome said that civilization would collapse because of a scarcity of fossil fuel. Now, any thinking person has to recognize that the real, and very dangerous, problem is that there is too damn much. We live with the benefits (and occasional costs) of the superabundance exhaustively documented by the authors, yet for far too many people, the mirage of the scarcity crisis has hardened into delusion. Because they deny the many real benefits from superabundance, they cannot grasp the simple fact that when harmful side effects are present, it is abundance that threatens us, not scarcity. As a result, they fail to see that all it takes to address the few cases of harmful abundance is to redirect the dynamic of discovery behind superabundance. After scientists learned that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer, governments adopted policies that halted the production of CFCs and encouraged an abundance of safe alternatives. If the facts documented here can free people from the apathy of delusion and help them see the optimistic possibilities revealed by pervasive superabundance, the way forward will be obvious.”

JORDAN PETERSON, author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“We are living in signal times. The rate at which everything is changing is unparalleled, as is the increase in that rate itself. Two starkly divergent paths therefore present themselves before us, more clearly than ever before: movement toward an era of superabundance, where everyone could have everything they needed and perhaps even most of what they wanted, or degeneration into a state of apocalypse-inspired, faux-compassionate, authoritarian hell, perhaps worse than anything we saw in the most extreme excesses of the 20th century. Could we choose the former path? Tupy and Pooley, anything but naive optimists, say yes and explain why. Read this book. It’s a valid antidote to demoralization, cynicism and hopelessness.”

STEVEN PINKER, author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“People don’t depend on stuff; they depend on ideas—formulas, algorithms, knowledge—which allow stuff, useless by itself, to satisfy our wants. In this lucid and illuminating book, Tupy and Pooley lucidly use this insight to explain a fact that, surprisingly, surprises people: over the centuries, our increasing knowledge has made more stuff available to us.”

GEORGE WILL, Washington Post

“There are those who wish for scarcities, and who work to inhibit economic growth, so that government can claim an excuse to ration this and that. Happily, they have met their match in Tupy and Pooley, who demonstrate that population growth is not a problem, it is the solution—the most important resource.”

JASON FURMAN, professor of the practice of economic policy, Harvard University, and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

“'Superabundance' pulls off the remarkable feat of being both exhaustive and entertaining at the same time. It adds a critical piece to the growing canon of books documenting the rapid improvements in the quality of human life: an explanation that is grounded in rapid population growth. Anyone who cares about the future of humanity should read this book.”

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

“In their essential and provocative new book, Tupy and Pooley show that the ultimate resource remains human ingenuity. Superabundance is a must read for anyone who cares about the fate of humankind and our bountiful, beautiful planet.”

DEIRDRE MCCLOSKEY, author of Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All and distinguished professor emerita of economics and history, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Pessimism sells, which is strange. But the scientific evidence shows that optimism is a lot more sensible. Stop weeping. Read the book and smile.”

MATT RIDLEY, author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

“The decline of poverty and famine and disease and violence over the past few decades has been spectacular, as Tupy and Pooley demonstrate. There is every reason to think it can continue and our grandchildren will look back on today’s world with horror and pity. This book is a comprehensive, detailed, and devastating riposte to the perpetual pessimists who dominate modern discourse.”

ANDREW MCAFEE, author of More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources—and What Happens Next

“It’s true that we live on a delicate planet that is composed of a finite number of atoms. But as this fascinating and heartening book shows, it’s also true that we humans can increase both our population and prosperity as much as we want without endangering the earth. The key, as Tupy and Pooley show, is innovation. Read Superabundance to have your assumptions challenged and your sense of hope restored.”

BALAJI SRINIVASAN, former chief technology officer, Coinbase

“Our future is a battle between positive-sum technology and zero-sum mentalities. Tupy and Pooley show that we have the numbers on our side and that the long-term trend in resource abundance is promising.”

MICHAEL SHERMER, author of The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom

“In a tsunami of bad news about Russian revanchism, nuclear saber rattling, global warming, inflation, supply chain shortages, and a pandemic emerges Superabundance, a data-fueled corrective to the doom and gloom the media daily heaps upon us. Tupy and Pooley have done the world a service with this fact-filled reminder of how good our lives are compared to ages past, and how much more human flourishing is in store if we unleash human innovation.”

JOHAN NORBERG, author of Open: The Story of Human Progress

“More people produce more ideas and innovations. They also produce more nonsense. It is not resources but hope and common sense that are scarce. Human ingenuity can come up with a solution for every scarcity, though, and now we have an antidote to nonsense as well: this magnificent, ground-breaking book by Tupy and Pooley.”

DAVID M. SIMON, senior fellow, Unleash Prosperity

“My father, Julian Simon, would have treasured Tupy and Pooley’s Superabundance. Its breathtaking scope, encyclopedic data, and deep and precise analysis of both economics and history powerfully confirm that people are indeed the ultimate resource—and that a growing population, particularly with greater freedom, has and will overcome every challenge and will, in virtually every measurable way, continue to enjoy greater prosperity.”

GEORGE GILDER, author of Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy

"The single greatest breakthrough in 21st-century economics is the comprehensive and creative translation of prices into time—time prices. Time prices calculate the hours and minutes needed to earn the money to buy goods and services. Unlike money prices, time prices are unequivocal and universal; they are the true prices. All other prices are circular, measuring value by measured values, commodities by commodities, market caps by money markets. Tupy and Pooley take this fundamental economic concept and make it the pivot of a providential new theory of economic measurement."

WILLIAM EASTERLY, author of The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor

"Every generation has a new Malthusian panic about world population growth, but every generation also produces a voice of reason to counter the panic. Tupy and Pooley’s brilliant book is deeply convincing that natural resources are actually becoming LESS scarce with growing population, pointing the way to continued economic progress."

Superabundance book cover featuring various flowers and fruits. Overlayed with the text Superabundance, the story of population growth, innovation, and human flourishing on an infinitely bountiful planet. Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley. Foreword by George Gilder.

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