what is america without gas and oil?
Oil and NatGas account for about 8% of the US economy (and that's the best case figure that the American Petroleum Institute can come up with)[1]. US exports are trivial.
In contrast, Russia's exports are 68% Oil and NatGas. [2]
Of course, for now, Oil and Natgas are key strategic components to every economy. That does not mean that supply and demand mean the same thing for every economy.
[1] https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/taxes/oil-and-nat...
What you say is true though, short term, but I think I might still rather be in Russia's position in terms of fossil fuels than that of the US, when we look at things long term. What Russia has the option of doing - which is also being discussed elsewhere in this thread - is using those resources domestically, to grow/develop its own industries and (currently dwindling) population. In fact that's what they're being pushed to do by the sanctions (as they have been developing their agriculture as a response to previous sanctions). I've been really really skeptic of the sanctions (to put it mildly) since the beginning. They will always find ways to sell their resources (if they want to).
The argument by throwaway71271's is pointless and made only as a distraction from the initial point that Russia is a petro-state heavily dependent on oil export - without those EXPORT revenues the entire state is at serious risk of collapse.
Obviously EVERY economy has many critical components that are yet a small percentage of the overall economy; your mention of food is an excellent example. These are not the question here.
The only relevant point is that the USA is not even close to dependent on it's exports of oil and gas. In fact, NatGas exports were entirely banned until recently. If all USA oil & NatGas activities were suddenly done on a nonprofit basis at cost, the economy would only shrink marginally. If Russia did the same thing, it would likely collapse on a timescale of single-digit months.
Finance? Remind me again how much debt the US has and how close it was to defaulting last year (saved by being forced to raise the debt ceiling yet again)? Things aren't looking much better right now.
Except that tech in the US is also NYC, Seattle, Austin and Boston too. It outgrew the SV hub years ago now. Those locations are the results of location shifting.
>"Finance? Remind me again how much debt the US has and how close it was to defaulting last year (saved by being forced to raise the debt ceiling yet again)? Things aren't looking much better right now."
"Finance" is used to describe the industry of and around investment banking. It is very different and distinct from the context of the US Treasury which you seem to be conflating. Further the US was never even close to actually defaulting on its debt last year. What happened in October was a bit of political theater around something known as the "debt ceiling." This is simply the agreed upon amount that congress says the US can have outstanding. This is very different from sovereign defaults that result from not having the means to pay. There is a primer here [1].
It's also unclear what you mean by "Things aren't looking much better right now." Despite experiencing the same stubborn inflation as the rest of the globe, the US has had something of a miracle recovery since the beginning of the pandemic. The unemployment rate as of May was 3.6% which is about what it was before the pandemic. There's been many other bright spots as well [2].
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/debt-ceiling.asp
[2] https://www.thebalance.com/how-is-the-economy-doing-3306046
The real capital of a nation is its people.
I think the GP was meaning that without being able to extract and sell gas and oil, Russia would be nothing compared to what it is today... I would guess that if the whole world shunned oil / gas and went electric only by the end of the year, that Russia would not have a lot of other industries to make up for lost sales, and the whole country would be what, more than 50% poorer or something? With not much else to sell to make up for the lost export money. (I am guessing from very little study)
indeed it would be catastrophic for the US and many other places if it were not for oil and gas today and tomorrow - but that was not the point of the conversation direction at the time I believe.