I agree with you. Not only is it not really a transfer of wealth, but they never define what they mean by this abstract phrase anyway, nor does the article even

I agree with you. Not only is it not really a transfer of wealth, but they never define what they mean by this abstract phrase anyway, nor does the article even link to the paper it's is using as it's basis (unless an adblocker is stopping me from seeing it.) Beyond all that, I have contracted in and currently work on the fringes of the Permian Basin oil industry, and I am pretty sure that this rut in oil prices is actually going to create even more wealth for the uber-wealthy oilmen, because there was a lot of money floating around and a lot of new fresh upstarts got going in the boom, but now that prices are down and banks are calling in the dues, all the small guys are falling out one by one and the big guys are just mergers&aquisition-ing their way into bigger positions of control of the market. T Boone Pickens has already said he thinks we've seen the lowest low at 26 and it's only up from there. So after all the little guys get gobbled up, the big guys will go heavy long on oil futures and make a ton of money, drive oil prices right back up (through manipulation as always), and suddenly this supposed "transfer of wealth to the consumer" is going to be more like $10 a gallon bleeding of the consumer.