Belief that everyone deserves everything and that someone else should pay for it, belief that the United States is evil and causes trouble around the world, belief that the rich "should pay" because they are "rich", always support the smaller miniority even though they may be evil, etc.

This is received wisdom among economists, including many conservative ones. Mark Zandi, the Moody's chief economist who was John McCain's economic adviser, judged that the Obama stimulus passed in 2009 kept unemployment from rising two percentage points higher. He says that the president's new proposal would boost GDP by 2 percent and reduce unemployment by 1.9 million jobs. Economists argue about the multiplier effect of different forms of government expenditure but not about whether there is an effect. The only people who claim that stimulus doesn't stimulate the economy are Republican politicians.

You can group the conservatives who reject the economic consensus into three rough categories: fundamentalists, cynics, and sheep. The fundamentalists are ideological and come in several varieties.

what's that they say about computer programs and garbage?

There are a lot of great things about capitalism. But I've come to the conclusion that it's unsustainable, for the same reason a Ponzi scheme is: it requires constant growth, or it collapses.

This time of year, you hear retail sales reports every week. Usually, it's something called "same-store sales" - a comparison of the sales this year vs. last year, at stores open at least a year. A big increase is good. No change is bad.

Why should that be? Why is it that no matter how well a store did last year, it's expected to do even better this year? Of course they don't want to lose sales, but what's wrong with staying the same? Why are corporations expected to show growth every quarter, year after year? The answer goes to the very heart of capitalism.

Banks can make money out of nothing at all, but ordinary people have to work to earn the money to repay those debts - plus the interest. Those compound interest payments mean the economy must constantly grow. More goods must be produced and consumed, more markets and more customers constantly found, more jobs created, or borrowers will start defaulting on their loans.

That is why I say capitalism is a Ponzi scheme. Like the classic Ponzi scheme, it needs a steady and ever-increasing supply of new investors, or it collapses. There has been no shortage of those in recent generations, as we expanded from local economies to the global capitalism we have today. But eventually, the expansion has to stop. In the end, the base of the economy is still natural resources. Bankers can create infinite wealth under our banking system, but backing up that wealth would require infinite resources - which the earth cannot supply.