Low gas prices are not something to be thankful for this week. Yes, you read that right. I’m not thankful for them, nor should you be.

To be sure, my hypocritical self enjoys filling up the tank on my truck for less than $50. On a selfish, pragmatic level it feels much better than coughing over the $90 it took to fill the same tank four months ago. But are these low prices indicators or something else more unsettling going on in the economy? Will these low prices hinder us from growing a stronger economy?

Arriving at these questions has been a month long process that included a national stock market dive of historic proportions, massive government giveaways in response, and the completion of my first graduate course in the area of economics. Somewhere in there, we also had an election.

“The Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression” was offered as an online course from UW-Oshkosh. I read and wrote more in this one-credit course than in many previous three-credit courses.

One from Viterbo University in LaCrosse comes to mind. That course, titled “Assessment in the Classroom,” laid out a very specific set of rubrics for grading. After intentionally only meeting the requirements for a “C,” my report card listed “A” as the final grade. The instructor clearly was part of a larger racket going on supported by the Department of Public Instruction and some of our institutions of higher learning. At least I got a nice textbook for my $500. But, I digress…

“The Roaring ’20s and the Great Depression” was not about bootleggers and Oakies. It was about Federal monetary policy, boom and bust cycles, deficit spending, speculation, and the functions of money. For some, not the stuff of excitement or even day-to-day relevance. For me, with each new reading I became more engrossed. Economics wasn’t the dry statistical charts or mundane supply and demand curves from the economics courses I took as an 18 year-old.

The study of economics wasn’t something to support the fallacy of trickle-down economics so embraced by modern Republican thought. Both in the ’20s and in recent years, our captains of industry invested less of their profits in infrastructure or their employees and instead opted for more short-term speculative profits.

It didn’t really work out back then. Today it doesn’t seem to be working out so well either. Nor have I found that, as our government becomes more active in it, the American economy benefits. Democratic icon FDR is lauded as a hero in pulling our country out of the Great Depression. Yet, many economists also give him credit for making it take years longer than was needed. And interestingly, a few of his programs were found to be unconstitutional after being implemented.

Today, we have bipartisan support for corporate bailouts, with each side putting their populist spin on how such actions are sound, necessary and consistent with free-market principles. I think some prudence is needed when considering the words coming out of the mouths of any of the two main parties’ leaders when they speak on the economy.

Partisan thoughts aside, economics was revealed as a simple study of choices, whether individual or collective. It is really a philosophical field. And still it is pragmatic as hell because we live it every day.

About a quarter of our online discussions were applying the ideas of economic giants John Maynard Keynes, Milton Freidman and Murray Rothbard to what is happening in our modern economy. This wasn’t a forum of left or right-wing bloggers spouting “the sky is falling” opinions.  But…there was clear uneasiness with what is going on as we connected more and more dots. For an interesting contemporary voice, check out Doug Noland at prudentbear.com. His Nov. 13 piece about economic bubbles is noteworthy.

I’ve spoken to a few parents of students who are on free or reduced lunch (about 50 percent in the school I teach in) about the economy. They don’t seem as spooked. Is it because we are a bit more isolated in northern Wisconsin from the sputtering economy?  Or if one is impoverished enough, it doesn’t hurt as much?

On the flip side, the individuals I talk to who are more unsettled by this economy either own multiple properties, are in the higher-income brackets, or are about to or have recently retired. The impact on their net worth is greater if credit freezes get worse, pensions continue to fall or government grows.

So why are low gas prices something to not be thankful for? I didn’t really answer that yet. Some economic theory spells out that while falling prices initially are attractive to consumers, in the long run they hurt employees. Of more concern, could low gas prices minimize our motivations to seek new, more efficient technologies in our cars? And by association, our other energy needs?

So not only does our economy remain stagnant, but the environmental downside to fossil fuel consumption continues and national security complexities continue. Yes, I’m also not exactly doing cartwheels about falling natural gas or propane prices either. 

Some final places you might consider navigating to: 

For liberal readers: T. Boone Pickens, the man that funded the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry in 2004, has a pretty interesting plan to address our energy and national security needs. The Pickens Plan (pickensplan.com) isn’t what you might expect from what you previously think you know of this guy.

For conservative readers: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (thomaslfriedman.com) has a new book where he suggests greening the economy is what is needed to update our national infrastructure, help the economy, environment and national security.