And remember that the universe is expanding, which means that a barrel of oil today is actually larger than a barrel of oil from 1980.

true enough. But the cylinders in the engines are expanding at the same rate, and the distance from place to place is growing, so the fuel mileage should be the same. At the same time, the dollar is shrinking, so the US economy must not be tied to the cosmological constant after all.

:)

"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein