Originally Posted by chennai
I think, perhaps, that the U.S.'s "inefficiency" of converting oil to GDP may have been the gist of the OP's point. I think the idea is, the U.S. puts oil in and gets less in terms of GDP than other countries.
Is it inefficient? If you look at that statistic in a vacuum it is, but then look at labor force sizes and GDP/capita. You could say the other countries convert labor into GDP a lot less efficiently than the U.S. It's not a matter of efficiency, it's a matter of the methods used for production. I'm not making any value judgements about using people vs. fuel to produce goods. I'm just pointing out that you can't see oil as the only input into GDP and draw conclusions about efficiency.