The new oil prices, reconstituted in a lower range, completely wiped out the increases of the Second Oil Shock of 1979–81. The economic benefits to consumers were enormous. If the two oil price shocks of the 1970s constituted the “OPEC tax,” an immense transfer of wealth from consumers to producers, then the price collapse was the “OPEC tax cut,” a transfer of $50 billion in 1986 alone back to the consuming countries. This tax cut served to stimulate and prolong the economic growth in the industrial world that had begun four years earlier, while at the same time driving down inflation. In
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