How does the price of oil affect the United States economy?

Makes a lot of money for someone.How does the price of oil affect the United States economy?
America could be independant if alternate fuel sources were used such as ethanol which is made from corn. If that source were used it would also boost america's farming economy. The recent overtaking of the gulf with mega-structures costing 500 million dollars a piece in construction was a mistake in my opinion, the oil is rich in the gulf no doubt about it. We also need a conversion to a clean burning fuel source which is ethanol to help prevent the complete deterioration of the o-zone layer within the next 100 years.How does the price of oil affect the United States economy?
Bottom line, it potentially affects everything in the economy because everything we buy has gas money in it. All that stuff at the store was driven (or flown or shipped) to it using oil products.





Given that, a high price of oil increases the cost of producing everything, and thus is bad for the economy (overall). It is probably the case that the high oil prices knocked a couple points off of what the US economic growth would have been with ';normal'; oil prices.





The remarkable thing about the US economy is how well it has handled the price of oil. Back in the 70's, a similar circumstance wrecked it (stagflation, etc).





The US economy is radically more energy efficient than it was then (dollar of gdp vs dollar of oil), so it was generally able to shrug it off.





If that can last long term, we don't know. But one thing is for sure, we will be even less sensitive next time.