Ok, I’ll bite. What is it that drives the economy - according to conservative professors?
Production. The focus on consumption is nonsense. Nothing can be consumed until someone produces it whether it’s digging roots, hunting or building a rocket.
Consumption based societies collapse quickly as people simply starve or freeze to death. You’ll find this article and the comments interesting:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2120669/posts