Happy times are here again at the gas pump. The price of oil keeps falling, and Americans are filling their tanks for less than $2 a gallon. The government says cheaper gasoline put an extra $100 billion into drivers’ wallets last year alone.

That seems like it would be good for the economy. Turns out, it might not be.

“Is it possible that lower oil prices could actually hurt the U.S. economy?” asks Vipin Arora, an economist with the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “I think the answer could be yes.”

Arora’s findings are based on his own research, so this isn’t the government’s official word on the matter. But his research suggests that cheap gas might be bad for America.

Of course drivers like cheap gas. But people “sitting on the oil rig in Texas” don’t like cheap gas — nor do the truck drivers and businesses supplying the oilfields and hotels and restaurants that have set up shop to serve oil workers.

An oil pumpjack works at dawn Jan. 20 in the oil town of Andrews, Texas. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Arora analyzed government data, and found that what’s changed is that the oil and gas industry as a share of GDP has about doubled in the past decade. Now it has grown so large that it’s changed the basic equation of whether cheap gas is a good thing overall.

“The benefits to consumers could be around $140 billion from gasoline savings,” Arora says. “But the losses on the other side due to lower production, less investment, less build-out of infrastructure could be around that amount. So we’re kind of at a wash.”

This might help to explain why the economy still isn’t exactly charging forward even with the stimulus of cheap energy. But Arora himself notes that the question needs more study.

Meanwhile, analysis by the research firm Moody’s Analytics finds that cheap oil and gas are still a net positive. And plenty of experts remain in that camp.

“The bottom line is the United States economy is much better off with low-price energy than it would be with high-price energy,” says Philip Verleger, an economist and consultant who tracks energy markets.

The government says the average household saved $700 last year on cheaper gas. But the Commerce Department also says 2015 had the weakest retail sales growth in six years.

So why hasn’t there been more of a boost from that extra spending money?

“I think the mistake everybody makes when they say that there’s been no impact from the low price of energy is to fail to understand that the economy would be much worse off right now had we not had this decline in the price of oil,” Verleger says.

And then there’s the question of what caused the drop in oil prices.

Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research in Chicago, evokes an old adage: “The day that the price of oil falls, you might not like the reason.”

He says a slowdown in China and elsewhere around the world is driving down the price of oil along with other commodities such as copper, aluminum and zinc.

So at least part of the reason oil prices have crashed, Bianco says, goes beyond the oil market itself and the boom in production of oil in the U.S. It’s part of a larger global slowdown. And some investors are worried that slowdown will hurt the U.S., too.

“The fear is it’s part of a larger whole,” Bianco says. “You cannot look at it in a vacuum.”

So far, there isn’t a lot of evidence that the U.S. is getting dragged down by all the trouble abroad. Job growth remains pretty solid. The economic recovery is continuing. And some analysts think we might see a bigger boost from cheaper energy later this year.

We ponder the origins of money, the economics of Santa, and the business of cemeteries. Why? Because you asked.

Today on the show, we answer listeners’ questions.

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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is on a goodwill tour through Italy and France this week, trying to drum up investment for his country’s sanctions-battered economy.

But Iran still faces challenges that make it hard for companies to do business with Tehran.

In a move that was loudly celebrated in Iran, the United States and other countries earlier this month agreed to lift an economic embargo that had been imposed in 2012 in an effort to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

The move means that companies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere are free to invest in and trade with Iran. And many seem interested in doing so.

“What we know is that there are many firms in Europe that are eager to enter into Iranian markets,” says Nader Habibi, a professor of Middle East economics at Brandeis University. “There is no shortage of those. Many of them have already made initial trips to prepare the ground for partnership or investment in Iran.”

But doing business in Iran presents special challenges, and the reasons have to do with U.S. policy.

While the U.S. government has agreed to lift the nuclear sanctions against Iran, it continues to impose other sanctions over Iran’s human rights policies and support for terrorism. These sanctions bar American citizens and companies from most forms of investment or trade with the country.

In theory, those sanctions should affect only U.S. companies — but in reality, the law’s reach goes well beyond U.S. borders, Habibi says.

The U.S. financial sanctions “can still cause some problems and make some of the European businesses and banks subject to U.S. economic punishment,” he says.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Assets Control “has made it very clear that no payments linked to Iran may be processed through the U.S. financial system,” says Julia Pfeil, senior associate at the Baker & McKenzie law firm in Frankfurt, Germany.

“So if you receive money from Iran as a bank or a company,” she says, “you must make sure that this money does not then go to the U.S. or to a U.S. bank or to your U.S. subsidiary.”

That means foreign financial institutions doing business in the United States — and almost any bank of any consequence has substantial U.S. operations — must somehow segregate any Iranian money they hold from their U.S. assets. That’s difficult to do, Pfeil says. There’s no easy way to isolate Iranian money from the rest of the bank’s holdings.

“In a bank, you don’t have separate financial streams,” she says. “You have the money that goes more or less into a big pool. Of course, it is possible to find out which payment has gone where. But ultimately controlling so that, say, 20 euros that have come from Iran do not end up in the U.S. — that is a very big problem for banks.”

Beyond this, says Jimmy Gurule, a former Treasury Department official who now teaches at Notre Dame Law School, “Foreign financial institutions need to be very careful [because], while they may not be running afoul of the nuclear sanctions because they’ve been lifted, doing business with Iran in a particular set of transactions may run afoul of the counterterrorism sanctions.”

Foreign banks are especially nervous about violating U.S. sanctions laws because they have sometimes been hit with hefty fines for doing so. In 2014, France’s largest bank, BNP Paribas, agreed to pay a $9 billion penalty for helping clients in Sudan, Cuba and Iran evade sanctions.

“So what we are hearing from Europe is that although European sanctions are lifted, the banks, especially major banks which transact with the United States, are very cautious,” Habibi says.

Companies that want to do business in Iran have to first find banks that will work with them, Pfeil says. That means using small banks with no significant operations in the U.S. or even Iranian banks.

Still, Gurule believes the Iranian market will ultimately prove irresistible to some businesses.

“I think the economic incentive may just be too great an allure for the counterterrorism sanctions to have a chilling effect and prohibit them from doing business with Iran altogether,” he says.

But these companies will first have to decide whether the allure of Iran is worth the risks they’ll face when they do business there.

North Carolina is one of the country’s largest poultry producers — and getting bigger. Large-scale chicken farms are spreading across the state. Government regulations have allowed these farms to get much closer to where people live. That’s not just a nuisance. Neighbors say it’s also a potential health hazard.

Craig Watts is an industrial chicken farmer in Fairmont, N.C. He contracts with Perdue and has raised birds for more than 20 years. Still, he says sometimes it’s a struggle to meet the demands of the industry.

“They don’t have to spend 24/7 with that chicken and have to deal with its waste. I deal with it and that kind of stuff. It’s a good situation for them,” Watts says.

His birds produce 700 tons of poultry waste each year, and he’s responsible for it. It’s spread in nearby fields and sold to farmers for fertilizer. Watts’ operation is one of thousands of confined animal feeding operations in the state.

These large-scale chicken farms are popping up near residential areas in western North Carolina, especially in Surry County. That worries residents Terry and Mary Marshall. “Your throat starts to hurt — you know you are in it,” Terry says. “It smells like a lot of ammonia, and sometimes, just dead rotting meat.”

Surry County residents from left, Terry Marshall, Dr. Katherine Kellam, Donna Bryant, Mary Marshall and Jesse Hardy lend support to each other during a meeting at Bryant’s home in the Shoals community. Mary Marshall says the odor and pollution from nearby chicken farms can make it hard to breathe. Keri Brown/WFDD hide caption

toggle caption Keri Brown/WFDD

The waste is a combination of manure, feed and carcasses — which can cause harmful gas emissions. Mary says there are dust particles in the air and it can be hard to breathe. “We had some friends over to the house,” she says, “several people one night, and it was so bad, they had flashlights out in the front yard and you could see” the particles.

Environmental groups are concerned, too. Will Scott with the Yadkin Riverkeeper says chicken farms aren’t under the same scrutiny as other industries. These dry-litter poultry operations are exempt from state odor ordinances, and federal regulators don’t monitor their air emissions.

“I think what you are seeing here is the influence of a very powerful industry over state legislatures and over the federal government,” Scott says. “To the point where even the Environmental Protection Agency has not stepped up to regulate these facilities, despite the fact that we know they are polluting waterways across the country.”

The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t see it that way. Allison Wiedeman of the EPA’s Water Permits Division says water quality regulations have been in place for years, and states can enforce additional requirements on poultry producers.

“We see that it’s working,” she says. “We know that these facilities have to have permits if they discharge, and so all I can tell you right now is that the process is working.”

Just how much waste is produced is unknown. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality says it doesn’t have a system to track these dry litter systems.

Bob Ford with the North Carolina Poultry Federation says more regulation would hurt the industry, which is worth $34 billion to the state economy. He adds odor and other issues are the farmer’s responsibility, but he acknowledges companies could be more involved. “There’s always room for improvement on anything what we do out here,” Ford says. “Maybe we can try to use more buffer zones or tree planting to reduce the impact.”

Tyson and Perdue, two major companies that contract with independent farmers, both declined interviews for this story. They did release statements that said their farmers are required to follow the law. But the laws don’t offer any protections for Terry and Mary Marshall.

Mary says it’s already too late for her neighborhood. “I have to hold myself together all of the time,” she says. “I knew it was going to be bad, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad.”

Mary is lobbying state lawmakers and says she wants future chicken farms away from residential areas, and something to control the odor and pollution, which she says will get worse in the hot North Carolina summers.

Keri Brown reports for member station WFDD in Winston-Salem, N.C.

IKEA’s Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro how his company plans to keep expanding even while he says many in the Western world have lost their appetite for more stuff.

When Netflix announced its expansion to 130 countries, including Kenya, Nairobi-based IT specialist Mark Irungu says he was thrilled.

He had never failed to find ways to stream Netflix, even when it was blocked in Kenya.

But, he says, touching his heart, “that morning, when I saw that Netflix is global? I can’t compare it to anything else.”

And then he delivers one of the sweetest analogies about media access I have ever heard: “Think of it as a child who tries to get sugar from the sugar bowl. And they’re doing it illegally when Mom’s not looking. And one day Mom says, ‘Hey, you can have all the sugar you want.’ “

His sugar? It’s the Netflix drama Narcos, which follows the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar and his Colombian drug cartel. Irungu finished watching Season 1 in a day.

His joy that day wasn’t just about the convenience of being able to stream legally or the superior quality that his legitimate subscription bestowed. It was about feeling invited, included in the global community.

And then Kenya’s film ratings agency threatened to take that sugar away.

The chairman of Kenya’s Film Classification Board Jackson Kosgei threatened to block Netflix for inappropriate content. Netflix countered that parental controls are part of the site.

The board, which regulates what films and TV shows can be shown on Kenyan media, also said that Netflix had failed to seek a license to broadcast its content in Kenya.

But it’s not even clear the Kenyan agency has the legal authority to ban the streaming site. It depends on whether Netflix is classified as a traditional broadcaster or an online platform like YouTube.

Legal issues aside, the film board’s threats sparked national debate.

Newspaper columnists are debating the pros and cons of binge watching. Pro: It’s incentive for your kids stay home at night, a good thing in a dangerous city like Nairobi. Cons: They’re binge-watching.

And then there’s concern about the future of Kenya’s nascent film industry, which has often struggled to compete for a local audience against foreign films.

On the set of the TV show Pendo (Love), the cast and crew were on break because the power was out. Again.

The show’s director Gilbert Lukalia is working with a tiny budget and can’t afford a good generator. And he says can’t compete with the high-quality productions on Netflix.

“We can compete on one small element and that’s a story — we have good stories,” say Lukalia.

Still, Lukalia is himself is a Netflix fan. He’s opposed to a ban on Netflix and says the film board should spend more time promoting Kenyan talent.

And maybe, as his country beings to produce bigger and better shows, a platform like Netflix could help bring binge-worthy Kenyan stories to the rest of the world.

After years of trying and failing to push new laws through Congress, gun control advocates are targeting American firearms makers from a different angle.

“The only thing they really understand is money,” says Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of the nonprofit New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. She’s also part of a coalition called the Campaign to Unload, which encourages investors large and small to divest from owning stock in companies that make guns and ammunition.

“You may not even know that your 401(k) has gun stocks in it,” Barrett says. “So asking the question is very, very important. Not only for individuals, but for public pension funds…it’s really raising the issue and making gun stocks toxic.”

Gun control advocates have been pushing for years to get investors to divest from companies that make firearms and ammunition. Now officials in New York City want to widen that push to include retailers. But not everyone thinks their divestment campaign will succeed.

“If it’s made to be punitive, it’s not going to work,” says Andrea James, a firearms industry analyst with Dougherty & Company. She says gun stocks have performed well because gun sales have been brisk.

“When the divestment happens,” James says, “I don’t think it really affects the underlying business, meaning the number of firearms they sell.”

The divestment camp has claimed some victories after mass shootings in Connecticut and California. Big institutional investors like the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) and pension funds in New York and Philadelphia have dropped their holdings in gun companies.

But the stock price of those gun companies has not gone down. In fact, since the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012, the stock prices of Sturm, Ruger & Co. and Smith & Wesson have mostly gone up, even as big institutional investors have moved to sell.

“In a free and open market, other shareholders will come and take their place,” James says.

Members of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and the National Action Network march against gun violence on the streets of New York in 2012. Kathy Willens/AP hide caption

toggle caption Kathy Willens/AP

This includes some investors who want to hold gun stocks as an expression of support for the Second Amendment.

Still, divestment supporters say this latest push is different because it’s aiming beyond just the gun companies themselves. New York Public Advocate Letitia James is pushing the city’s largest pension fund to divest from national retailers that sell firearms, including Wal-Mart, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Cabela’s.

“It really sends a strong moral message that public dollars should not be used to prop up an industry that has caused so much carnage on the streets of New York City and other urban centers across this nation,” Letitia James says.

Letitia James and other divestment supporters point to the success of past campaigns against the tobacco and coal industries — especially the push to end the apartheid in South Africa. But even in that famous campaign, some economists question whether divestment had the kind of impact its supporters claim.

“Well, unfortunately, it does not have an effect,” says Paul Wazzan, an economist at the Berkeley Research Group in California. He has studied the divestment campaigns against companies that did business in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Wazzan says there was no measurable effect on their stock prices.

“But it does generate a lot of press and interest,” Wazzan says. “And the political pressure starts to build and that did ultimately have an effect. It’s not what our paper was about, but I think the political pressure ultimately did have an effect on these companies.”

That kind of pressure is harder to measure than a stock price. But divestment supporters say it’s still worth a try.