[mrPronmaker]

To add another perspective to this, the chart plots "productivity". In corporate America, an increase in productivity usually means you layed people off. The people that are left continue to do the job they did, plus the work of those laid off; therefor they are more productive. Of course at some point someone realizes that the work is not getting done right, the wheels are coming off the buses, etc., and then they have to hire a few more people.

When Obama claims we are the most productive people in the world, what it means is

1. We work hard (not necessarily harder than the rest of the world)
2. We have racked up huge GDPs through financial fraud (derivatives, etc.)
3. When you take the world's GDP's and divide them by the number of workers, our fraudulent number looks bigger than their fraudulent number.

therefor, we are the [fraudulently] most productive workers in the world.