《富裕社会》的前几版通篇都在明确表述对通货膨胀的担心。通货膨胀一直对社会基本福利构成威胁。要么出现通货膨胀，要么是大量失业。现在情况已经变得不再这么泾渭分明。当时通货膨胀的主要原因是工资和价格的交互作用。管理者和工会进行谈判，工资提高了，部分原因是过去价格提高所致，接着价格出现了补偿性上升，而价格提高又产生了增加工资的新要求。这个过程周而复始，出现了工资和价格的螺旋式上升运动。货币和财政政策只有在能够控制投资者和消费者的支出时才能充分发挥作用，进而会减少产出，增加失业，最终限制工资需求，导致价格上涨。这种解决方案明显要比问题本身更糟糕。
在《富裕社会》中，加尔布雷思以“富足社会”与“传统智慧”扩展了经济学的语言，指出了现代富足社会背后隐藏的严重问题，如公共生活与私人生活标准间的资金与行动分配不均，以及环境问题的重要性。

- Presents the life's work of a Nobel Laureate and internationally recognised leader in the field
- Builds new bridges between physics and biology
- Provides a physical basis for Darwin's principle of natural selection
- Presents a new theory of information including semantics
This book presents a vivid argument for the almost lost idea of a unity of all natural sciences. It starts with the "strange" physics of matter, including particle physics, atomic physics and quantum mechanics, cosmology, relativity and their consequences (Chapter I), and it continues by describing the properties of material systems that are best understood by statistical and phase-space concepts (Chapter II). These lead to entropy and to the classical picture of quantitative information, initially devoid of value and meaning (Chapter III). Finally, "information space" and dynamics within it are introduced as a basis for semantics (Chapter IV), leading to an exploration of life and thought as new problems in physics (Chapter V).
Dynamic equations - again of a strange (but very general) nature - bring about the complex familiarity of the world we live in. Surprising new results in the life sciences open our eyes to the richness of physical thought, and they show us what can and what cannot be explained by a Darwinian approach. The abstract physical approach is applicable to the origins of life, of meaningful information and even of our universe.