“The Affluent Society” is John Galbraith’s most famous work, published in 1958 and published for the first time in Russian. At the center of the fascinating narrative is the prosperous United States of the 1950s (an attentive reader will easily relate what is described to today’s realities in many developed countries). Successful private businesses continually bring new consumer products to the market. There are so many of them that only gigantic advertising expenses and accessible credit make it possible to sell everything produced. But despite the abundance already achieved, economic growth remains the criterion for successful management of the country. All attempts by the state to develop collectively consumed goods, be it education or the urban environment, raise suspicions of corruption and are chronically underfunded. How is such a paradoxical combination of “private abundance and public poverty” possible? Galbraith considers several reasons: inertia in the development of economic science, which ignores new realities; the self-interest of many people, as well as the harmful consequences of policies that promise people increased personal wealth and consumption in exchange for refusing to fight poverty and inequality. The publication will take pride of place on the bookshelf of both business theorists and practitioners, both experienced and beginners.