If you care to listen, some sage observer of the U.S. economy is going to tell you that what many of us consider the gift of falling oil prices is a bad thing, well disguised.

Tear away the disguise. Cheaper oil is still creating more winners than losers, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek article.

Far more people live in oil-importing countries than live in oil-exporting countries. The United States remains a net importer. The well-publicized travails of U.S. shale oil producers are small compared with the gains by American consumers and businesses that are paying less for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, petrochemicals and the like. With fuel prices down, people are driving more miles and buying more cars and trucks.

Close to 70 percent of the U.S. economy is consumer spending, which will gain from cheaper crude. Only about 10 percent is capital spending, of which 10 percent to 15 percent is in the energy sector. That comes to roughly 1 percent of U.S. output, which might decline 20 percent this year, making it a relative drop in the bucket of U.S. gross domestic product, says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight.

The one fly in the petroleum jelly is the risk of some kind of financial crack-up like the 1998 Russian default. “You will always have financial risks associated with fast, unexpected changes,” says Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The big problem with this oil sell-off is that it surprised everyone and no one has really prepared for the risks it poses.”

The biggest risk isn’t the low price but the uncertainty, which could freeze investment and spending, says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates, a wealth management firm.