Surplus is a representation of how much extra benefit consumers and producers get. Let’s say you are willing to pay $1000 for a laptop, but you spend only $700. We would say you have a surplus of $300 because you now can spend that money elsewhere. The previous lesson will lay a big role in this analysis, since we want to see how much worse off consumers and producers are from taxes (obviously a real analysis would also weigh the effects of government programs, but that’s a more advanced topic).